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THE APEX 



THOMAS B. GOULD 



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Boston 

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'Richard G. Badger 

The Gorham Press 
1903 



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Copyright 1903 by Thomas B. Gould 
All Eights Reserved. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

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CUSS Ol. xXc No. 

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COPY B. 



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printed at 

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INTKODUCTION 

THE author of the little volume which is here 
presented to the public has been a life-long 
seeker after Truth. His religious life has 
been a checkered one; his is the growing 
mind which must always be the apparently inconsis- 
tent one. It is apt to be a case of arrested develop- 
ment on the spiritual side when a man rests content in 
the beliefs which have been handed down to him from 
his forefathers, nor cares to search for himself whether 
or not these things be so. 

The following words to which Mr. Gould recently 
gave utterance give the keynote to his character and 
explain his desire to give to others what he has found 
for himself. "I have/' he says, "in my day believed 
almost everything that others have believed, and now 
I am going to Jcnov; instead of believe." 

Thomas B. Gould is in the early sixties, a quiet, 
thoughtful man possessing the eye and brow of one 
who has long looked beneath the surface of things ; of 
one who has searched for truth as for hidden treasure. 
Although he now for the first time comes before the 
public as a writer, yet the thoughts expressed within 
this book have been seething in his mind for years — its 
material began to be stored up even in early life. As 
a boy working in a cotton mill he became interested in 
machinery, and a taste for invention led him to follow 
the careers of such men as Mr. Edison with absorbing 
interest. 

Three years in the Civil War, during which he 



4 INTRODUCTION 

twice endured the horrors of imprisonment, in the old 
Libby Prison, and at Belle Isle, tended to develop the 
sterner stuff in his composition, and to give him the 
true idea of war expressed in the words — "war is 
hell." 

Denied the advantages of education in his youth, 
Mr. Gould has overcome many of his limitations by 
extensive and well chosen reading. From the black- 
smith's forge, at which he has worked during the lat- 
ter half of his life, he has gone home to wrestle with 
abstruse subjects, and to follow the reasonings of a 
Fiske, a Huxley, a Swedenborg or a Drummond. 
From the anvil to the author's desk seems a far cry, 
but our author is a striking example of the freedom of 
the mind, which can at will soar above material things, 
and dwell and roam in a kingdom of its own. "It is 
the privilege," he tells us, "of every person on this 
globe to see and hear and know all that he needs to 
know — in other words, all he strives for." This has 
been his life work — a striving for knowledge. To this 
end he has been an earnest student of the teachings of 
Christ, and on these teachings bases the conclusions 
he has drawn. Mr. Gould has imbibed much of the 
Spirit of the Christ, drawn inspiration from the Gos- 
pels, and learned what it is to dwell in the pure region 
called by Christ the kingdom of Heaven, or the King- 
dom of God. 

The writer has found this little book full of sugges- 
tion ; it suggests far more than could possibly be given 
utterance to in the limited space it occupies, and in- 
spires with its noble simplicity and' quiet acceptance 
of the verity of such sayings of Christ as: "He that 



INTRODUCTION 5 

believeth in me the works that I do shall he do also, 
and greater works than these shall he do, because I go 
to my Father." (John xiv. 12.) 

M. E. J. 
Boston, February, 1903. 



PEEFACE 

IT seems quite evident to me, and I do not think 
that the idea will be disputed by those who are 
the best judges, that there is in this country a 
large class of very intemperate readers. By this 
I do not mean those who study the most, or those who 
are seeking after real, substantial knowledge, for the 
mind is so well adapted for expansion that it may be 
impossible to overfeed it ; but we may read and study 
too much at the expense of the physical system. 
There is one law that prevails in all the kingdoms, 
physical, mental and spiritual. The law of the physi- 
cal says that if we overeat we shall have dyspepsia, 
or some other form of disease: the law of the intel- 
lectual warns us that we shall become deranged or 
insane by excessive study. The spiritual law tells us 
that we shall become confused, bewildered, mystified, 
by inordinate speculative reading. From all the evi- 
dence we can obtain it seems safe to say that there 
never was a time when people were seeking after 
knowledge with less hope of obtaining it than they are 
today; and yet, every writer of a book has some idea 
which he thinks unique, and every church has its 
peculiar creed. If you mention this to a churchman, 
however, he will tell you that they all agree on the 
fundamentals. 

Scientific people tell us that the more they know, or 
the more they seek to know, the more mysterious Na- 
ture becomes, especially to those who are seeking after 
the Infinite. They tell us that when they clear up 



8 PREFACE 

one mystery it only opens the way to another ; or, in 
other words, that investigation leads to agnosticism. 
But this is only one period of the evolution of thought, 
and it may be that this mass of thought is only the 
meal in which the leaven of truth is to perform its 
part. "And, further, by these, my son, be admon- 
ished: of making many books there is no end: and 
much study is a weariness to the flesh." (Eccles. xii. 
12.) 

"Ever learning and never able to come to the knowl- 
edge of the truth." (2 Tim. iii. 7.) 

It has seemed to me that we need something more 
explicit in our ideas today, something more definite, 
something that has a foundation to rest upon. We 
have many stately religious mansions in the world to- 
day, but how many of them have real foundations? We 
have many learned religious books, but how many 
have foundations % We have thousands of eloquent ser- 
mons preached every Sunday, but how many have 
foundations ? The Pharisee will tell us that they all 
have them. I think that if we could have the testi- 
mony of the world today upon the teachings of the re- 
ligious world (I mean by this the testimony of those 
who do not belong to any church, but who attend oc- 
casionally or constantly), they would tell us that they 
do not comprehend the plan of salvation. I venture 
to say that no one can produce a sermon that has been 
written, published or preached within twenty-five 
years that contains the whole plan of salvation as 
Christ taught it. 

There must be a very solid foundation for all this 
mass of current religious literature, and it seems al- 



PREFACE 9 

most impossible that this state of affairs can long ex- 
ist. I know nothing about the statistics of the amount 
that is published, but it is certainly enormous. I ven- 
ture to hope that my humble addition to this already 
overflowing supply may at least furnish a little sub- 
stantial food for thought, I can but hint at the 
truth, though I cannot expect to make much impres- 
sion upon the world, being an old man, and having 
spent nearly all my life as a mechanic. I have neith- 
er the strength nor the ability to write a large book, 
neither do I think it necessary, nor do I expect ever to 
undertake to write another ; but I have for years had 
the desire to sow some seed of this kind. I have be- 
lieved that just such a little book was needed, and this 
has been my only motive in writing it. I do not claim 
that its teachings are my own ; but I believe them to 
be what the Great Teacher taught many years ago, and 
my one desire is to draw attention to the Truth to 
which He gave utterance. 



CONTEXTS 

PAGE 

I. What is God? 13 

II. What is God ? (Continued) 25 

III. The Holv Ghost 37 

IV. The New Birth 39 

V. What is Faith \ 46 

VI. God 49 

VII. The Image of God 57 

VIII. The New Life 63 

IX. The Destiny of Man 75 

X. Life and Death 86 

XL Closing Words • • • • 96 



THE APEX 



WHAT IS GOD? 

FROM the earliest record of the human race, we 
discover that men have believed that there is 
a God. 

Not only have they believed in a Unitarian 
but in a Trinitarian and also in a Universal God; 
Universal as existing in everything, manifest in every 
substance in the universe ; as some of the poets have 
sung it ; — 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 

There is, in this land of Christian civilization, an- 
other large class of believers in the existence of a God, 
who believe that the one they worship is the true God. 
If asked to give a reason for their belief, they will 
invariably tell you they can see their God in the 
Bible; he does not, however, dwell exclusively in 
books, and for further confirmation of their belief 
they will point you to the works of nature. To illus- 
trate, they will tell you that the artificial works which 
we see around us are the works of men, and that the 
works of nature are the works of God. 

It would be useless to enumerate the hundreds of 

13 



14 THE APEX 

Gods that have been, and are even now being wor- 
shipped in both heathen and civilized countries. In 
fact, the name God is a very indefinite term, and yet 
it is used indiscriminately. I have never heard any 
one say that he knows exactly what God is. Some 
people say there is no God ; while others, having be- 
come bewildered with the numerous ideas of God and 
the destiny of the human race, have settled down into 
a firm belief in the unknown Being that has always 
been worshipped in all ages. Nor shall I undertake 
to disturb the belief in any of these Gods until I can 
point to a better one than any of those that I have 
mentioned. Our religious teachers declare that God 
exists, but that He is a mysterious being. I have 
been repeatedly told that it is impossible to prove the 
existence of a God. If, then, God is a mysterious be- 
ing, and the Christ is a mystery, or was a mysterious 
incarnation of God in man, why do these teachers still 
claim to be the oracles of God % 

They say that the birth and life of the Christ were 
mysteries, and that his resurrection was a mystery. 
They also say that the Holy Ghost is a mystery ; but 
they do not attempt to explain how three persons can 
be one and each one can be God and all of God. The 
new birth, they say, is a mysterious transformation. 

They have never proved conclusively what will be 
the destiny of the human race: neither have they 
proved the immortality of the human soul. 

They have never explained the meaning of faith, 
and in fact, have never been able to give good reasons 
for their belief in the creeds to which they subscribe. 

If any man shall say, "We cannot know that there 



WHAT IS GOD? 15 

is a God," we know in what class to place him : for 
there is an old saying which declares that "the fool 
hath said in his heart, there is no God." 

Scientific evidence points toward the theory which 
I shall advance : and this theory is that there is a God 
and a Christ, a Holy Ghost, a new birth, and a future 
state of existence. What true faith is, I hope also to 
be able to show. 

In its quest after truth, science stands upon a firm 
foundation and accepts nothing but facts. That is 
what religion must furnish the coming generation: 
and true religion will not suffer by the demand. 

We are told that, although there are Lords many 
and Gods many, there is but one true and living God, 
and this saying will aid us in our search after the 
true God. If anything I shall say may appear to 
mean that there is more than one true and living God 
— this is not my intention. What I wish to affirm is 
that people can and do worship false gods ; and, fur- 
thermore, for fear of a misunderstanding, I will add 
that man has the power by his own wonderful volition 
to change even the one true and living God into a vin- 
dictive and hateful being. For all those who trust in 
this world or in anything in this world, or in them- 
selves alone, — without regard to the true principles 
that should govern them, and without regard to the de- 
mands of society upon them, — are trusting in an un- 
known and an untrue God. None but loving people 
can have a loving God. 

We have already placed those who do not believe in 
some kind of God in a class by themselves as fools. 



16 THE APEX 

We shall now appeal to those who believe in Clhrist 
or in his teachings. 

Some purely scientific people say that there is no 
evidence of God manifest in all nature. They say, 
look around through all the natural universe and you 
discover no God ; take the telescope and gaze upward 
and outward into the immensity of the natural heav- 
ens and you will discover nothing but suns and planets 
like those of our own solar system ; or, they continue, 
search with the microscope among the mineral, vege- 
table and animal kingdoms, and you shall discover no 
God. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer says : . . . "Those who think 
that science is dissipating religious beliefs and senti- 
ments seem unaware that whatever of mystery is taken 
from the old interpretation is added to the new; or 
rather, we may say that transference from the one to 
the other is accompanied by increase; since, for an 
explanation that has a seeming feasibility, science sub- 
stitutes an explanation which, carrying us back only a 
certain distance, there leaves us in the presence of the 
avowedly inexplicable." He further tells us that, as 
the result of thought on these great mysteries, "which 
become the more mysterious the more they are thought 
about," — "one truth must grow ever clearer — the 
truth that there is an inscrutable existence everywhere 
manifested, to which we can neither find nor conceive 
either beginning or end. . . . We are ever in presence 
of an infinite and eternal energy from which all 
things proceed." He then goes on to point to the 
crradual transformation of nature, its complexity, in- 
tense activity, "marvelous play of forces." "Each 



WHAT IS GOD? 17 

generation of physicists discovers in so-called 'brute 
matter' powers which, but a few years before, the most 
instructed physicist would have thought incredible: 
when the spectroscope proves to him that molecules on 
the earth pulsate in harmony with molecules in the 
stars — when there is forced on him the inference that 
every point in space thrills with an infinity of vibra- 
tions ..." he is continually prompted a to imagine 
some solution of the great enigma which he knows 
cannot be solved. . . . He yet feels compelled to 
think there must be an explanation." 

This is a part of the scientific evidence that teaches 
us that God cannot be found in nature: science can 
only point to something grand, powerful, immense and 
unknowable. It is said by those who have made an 
estimate of the matter than in an ordinary cyclone 
there is developed about four hundred million horse 
power to carry on the work of destruction and puri 
fication. It must be beyond our thought or imagina- 
tion to compute the energy necessary to propel all the 
machinery of this vast universe. As we increase in 
wisdom our conceptions of God will increase ; but sci- 
ence has commenced at the wrong end of the universe 
to seek after God. For if we should take the wings 
of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the 
universe we should not find Him any nearer than He 
is now and here. We have not seen the whole ocean 
that surrounds this continent; but if we have the 
privilege of walking on its shore, bathing in its surf, 
and sailing upon its bosom, what care we for its im- 
mensity, except as we are affected by the feelings of 
awe and grandeur with which it inspires us ? 



18 THE APEX 

If we should take passage on an ocean greyhound 
and go to foreign lands, we should find the same ocean, 
or the same in appearance that we find here. This 
difference would probably be apparent, however, — be- 
fore we went around the world it may have appeared 
small to us; now we are impressed with its immen- 
sity. 

Thus, while we cannot comprehend God in his in- 
finity, any more than we can view the ocean as a 
whole, yet we may comprehend him by his manifesta- 
tions of Himself in His greatest work — Man. It is 
evident that the universe exists under the control of 
a perfect law, and that this law is a law of love is 
equally evident. It is true also that we exist, and 
must eventually come into harmony with this law. 
We are not at present controlling the universe, but 
are being controlled by this great law. We may and 
shall be broken by being controlled, but if we resist 
we shall be ground to powder. 

It is probable that we shall be the ultimate end of 
evolution, and then shall we know even as also we are 
known. Some people say that they discover no indi- 
cation of intelligence in all the natural universe, 
neither do they discover any of the attributes that are 
ascribed to God. This is because they have ignored 
mankind in their quest after God : for we see all the 
attributes that are ascribed to Him manifest in men. 
Josiah Royce, in his book upon the subject of natural 
religion, "The World and the Individual," says : — 

"But what we at present say to the finite being is : 
You are at once an expression of the divine will, and 
by virtue of that very fact the expression here and 



WHAT IS GOD? 19 

now, in your life, of your own will, precisely in so far 
as you find yourself acting with a definite intent, and 
gaining through your act a definite empirical expres- 
sion . . . your individuality in your act is your 
freedom. This, your freedom, is your unique posses- 
sion. Nowhere else in the universe is there what here 
expresses itself in your conscious being . . . For all 
is divine, all expresses meaning, all meaning is unique- 
ly expressed. Nothing is vainly repeated. You, too, 
then, as individual, are unique. Just in so far as you 
consciously will and choose, you then and there in so 
far know what this unique meaning of yours is. There- 
fore are you in action free and individual . . . Arise 
then, freeman, stand forth in thy world ! It is God's 
world ! It is also thine !" 

I, too, believe that this is our world as well as God's 
world. It has been said in old time that the kingdom 
of heaven will allow r itself to be assaulted and taken by 
force — a faint heart will never gain heaven. We 
have been taught to beg pardon for our existence ; we 
may beg pardon if we are anything less than true men 
and women. Even God himself could not exist if he 
were other than a God of love — how then can we ex- 
pect to exist unless we are Godlike? How we may 
become Godlike will be considered in another chapter. 

The human organism alone, among all the works of 
nature, is adapted, and being evolved and perfected by 
its favorable environment, for the manifestation of 
what is Good, or God, — which terms are synonymous, 
for no one can comprehend what he has not the faculty 
to comprehend. 

Nearly all the ideas of God are taken from the pre- 



20 THE APEX 

mise that He is the Creator of all things ; but if it is 
absolutely necessary to say that all things that exist 
must have had a creator, then we must say that God 
himself must have had a creator; and this process 
must go on indefinitely, which would completely de- 
stroy the Creator. This belief existed, and still ex- 
ists in some minds in regard to this planet of ours. 
There are still those who think it is stationary, resting 
on a foundation of rocks: and if asked upon what 
these rocks rested would reply, 'upon rocks all the way 
down.' Now before we can come to a reasonable con- 
clusion as to what God is, we must recognize Him as 
the Father of all life ; and the whole universe, as Mr. 
Spencer tells us, is alive. Then we can see something 
of God in this direction: for if the natural universe 
is not immortal we have no evidence that anything mil 
be immortal, for we are a part of this universe by na- 
ture. Good and evil are at present in a state of chaos, 
but eventually, finally, they will be separated. All 
evil will be utilized for the benefit of the good. We 
can see this in the processes of nature. The poisonous 
substances in the atmosphere and the impurity of the 
soil are all utilized by the vegetable life on which ani- 
mals can subsist ; and the spiritual life must have the 
animal life in which it can live and develop. Each 
kind of life will retain its own identity ; that which 
is flesh will be flesh, and that which is spirit will be 
spirit. The Jews undertook to stone Christ because 
he called God his father : "because He, being a man, 
made himself God" : but He said He claimed only to 
be the Son of God, and this, in a lower and limited 



WHAT IS GOD? 21 

sense, was a privilege which he granted to every hon- 
est man. 

When he said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father/' he meant that man was the medium through 
which God intended to manifest Himself to men. 
Christ took not upon him the nature of angels, he took 
upon him the nature of men, as the writer to the He- 
brews tells us. Christ taught that 6rod is love; he 
also taught that He is the intelligent Power that moves 
this vast universe, and that He is Life, and is the life 
of all things ; that the hairs of our head are all num- 
bered ; that not a sparrow falls to the ground without 
His notice. These things, which w T ere hard to believe 
in his day on earth, are very easy to believe now : for 
any one of us may know of everything of importance 
that is transpiring in any part of the world, and even 
sometimes among the stars. It is not only possible, 
but extremely probable, that the whole universe is 
filled with a network of wireless telegraph lines, as 
well as telephones, and that there is a loving, intelli- 
gent power that is in intimate connection with the uni- 
verse. As an illustration, take the body and mind of 
a man : we can see his body, but his mind or soul is 
invisible to us ; we can, however, see the manifestation 
of his mind, just as we can see in the universe mani- 
festations of some power and intelligence that we call 
God. 

In one of the parables of Christ God is compared to 
a creditor who was a King ; and he commanded that 
one of his debtors, who owed him a large sum of mon- 
ey, should be sold, and also his wife and children and 
all of his property, and that payment should be made. 



12 THE APEX 

And the debtor fell down and begged his creditor to 
have patience and he would pay him all, and the King 
had compassion on him and released him, forgiving 
him the debt. Now this same debtor went and found 
a fellow-servant who owed him a small sum of money, 
and he caught him by the throat and said, Pay me 
what you owe me ! and the fellow-servant fell down at 
his feet and said, Have patience and I will pay you all 
I owe you ; and he would not, but cast him into prison 
until he should pay the debt. But this poor man's 
fellow-servants told this to the King. Then the King 
called this debtor of His whom he had so kindly for- 
given and said, Should not you have had pity on your 
fellow-servant, even as I had pity on you ? An5 the 
King was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors 
until he should pay the whole debt. And that was 
right. Christ goes on to say: So likewise shall my 
Heavenly Father do also unto you, if you from your 
heart's centre do not forgive your brother's trespasses. 
This is the kind of God that Christ taught; this 
teaching of his opens the kingdom of heaven to men, 
that our teachers have kept closed so long. The king- 
dom of heaven and the kingdom of God are the same. 
Christ shows in this parable our relation to God; it 
shows what God is and where He is. It shows that 
He will be to us personally what we are to others and 
to ourselves : and this personality is vital, for it is in 
our own mind and heart. When we have a forgiving 
heart or mind or brain, we forgive our own sins. 
When we have an unforgiving heart we condemn our- 
selves by the same rule and by the same power. Our 
volition, then, is our vital relationship with God. With 



WHAT IS GOD? 23 

our volition we bring to our aid all the infinite powers 
of the universe, or we may be crushed by our neglect 
even to use our volition. How shall we escape if we 
neglect ? This is a very important question. Our re- 
lation, then, seems to be the most important question 
of all, for even the poor wayfarer may decide this for 
himself. 

Those who wish to know something of the immen- 
sity of God may learn of Him in the natural sciences, 
Geology, Botany, Astronomy and the other sciences, 
all of which magnify Him. 

Those who profess to believe in Christ must believe 
also His teachings, and these teachings and parables of 
His may be taken as evidence to prove where God is. 
In that wonderful last prayer of Our Lord, speaking 
of His disciples and believers, He said: Neither pray I 
for these alone, but for them also that shall believe on 
me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as 
Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also 
may be one in us; that the world may believe that 
Thou hast sent me. And the glory which Thou gavest 
me I have given them ; that they may be one even as 
we are one ; I in them and Thou in me. Or, we may 
read it, Thou in me and I in them, that they may be 
perfect in one; that the love wherewith Thou hast 
loved me may be in them and I in them. 

This is the only God that we know anything about. 
This is the God that we can know. 

There is an old prophecy which says that the day 
will come when no man shall say, Know the Lord, for 
every one shall know Him. But some would have us 
believe that there is an unknown God : strange idea ! 



24 THE APEX 

Where is He? Christ said his habitation is in man. 
He also said, he that hath seen me hath seen the Fath- 
er. He had a personality, a heart, if yon like that 
term better, large enough to hold God in all His won- 
derful immensity. He exhorted every one to seek 
first the kingdom of God and of heaven. What can 
they do with the kingdom if they have it not in their 
minds ? A man can have nothing which does not ex- 
ist in his mind. 

The kingdom of heaven is the woof or filling that 
we are to weave into our every-day life, or an active 
life of loving motives. These are to be sought first: 
the sum accumulated will be the future heaven. 



II 



WHAT IS GOD? (Continued.) 

IN a chapter entitled "Keligion's First Postulate/' 
Mr. John Fiske says : "As a matter of history, 
the existence of a Quasi-Human God has al- 
ways been an assumption or postulate. It is 
something which men have all along taken for granted. 
It probably never occurred to anybody to try to prove 
the existence of such a God until it was doubted, and 
doubts oil that subject are very modern." 

In the ninth chapter of the same book, he tells from 
a scientific point of view how the evolution of the 
senses expands the world, and shows us how "natural 
selection is equivalent to survival of the fittest. The 
shapes of animals, as well as their capacities, have 
been evolved through almost infinitely slow increments 
of adjustment upon adjustment. In this way, for in- 
stance, has been evolved the vertebnate skeleton, 
through a process of which Spencer's wonderful analy- 
sis is as thrilling as a poem. Or consider the develop- 
ment of the special organs of sense. Among the most 
startling disclosures of embryology are those which 
relate to this subject. The most perfect organs of 
touch are the vibrissae or whiskers of the cat. . . . 
These cat whiskers are merely specialized forms of 
such hairs as those which cover the bodies of most 
mammals, and which remain in evanescent shape up- 
on the human skin imbedded in minute sacs. IsTow in 

*5 



26 THE APEX 

their origin the eye and ear are identical with vibris- 
sae. In the early stages of vertebrate life, while the 
differentiation of dermal tissue went mostly to the 
production of feathers or scales, sundry special dif- 
ferentiations went to the production of eyes and ears. 
. . . The implication of these wonderful facts is that 
sight and hearing were slowly differentiated from the 
sense of touch. And what was the result of all this 
for the creature in whom organs of vision were thus 
developed % There was an immense extension of the 
range, complexity, and definiteness of the adjust- 
ment of inner relations to outer relations; in other 
words, there was an immense increase of life. There 
came into existence, moreover, for those with eyes to 
see it, a mighty, visible world, that for sightless crea- 
tures had been virtually non-existent." 

Now what does this lesson in natural science teach ? 
I think it tells us of our accountability, according to 
the teachings of Christ when he said, "He that hath 
ears to hear let him hear," — there are none so deaf as 
those that will not hear. There are a great many 
things to see and hear in this universe of ours, but 
many of them are optional with us. When — as I 
have been trying to make clear — our mental insight 
shall become enlightened, and we cultivate all the 
God-given powers of our minds as well as our bodies, 
after the pattern that Christ has given us, it is pos- 
sible that we may have organisms superior to that in 
which Christ dwelt; for he said that greater works 
than he did should his believers do. He had a per- 
sonality that was capable of holding the kingdom of 
God and of heaven within it. He had a mental vision 



WHAT IS GOD? 27 

that could see God and heaven and legions of angels 
all about him. It is the privilege of every person 
on this globe to see and hear and know all that he 
needs to know ; in other words, all he strives for ; and 
this is the vital question, namely, man's privilege and 
accountability. I acknowledge the necessity of the 
knowledge of the true God, but what is the true God ? 
I claim that it is our relation to the Truth. Now the 
question "What is Truth ?" is the one that was asked 
of Christ. In the conversation with Nicodemus he 
says : "But he that doeth truth cometh to the light that 
his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought 
in God." That is to say, everything and every idea 
that we can prove to be true is God's truth, and when 
we know all the laws of nature perfectly, we shall 
know God. But we may at any time know our 
heart's relation to Him — our knowledge of God must 
be like our relation to Him, for, as I try to prove in 
my chapter on the new birth, we may have perfect 
mind or heart relation with Him at once, when we are 
perfectly sincere in our quest after truth, and receive 
His words into our hearts. So, also, we shall know 
Him by the same rule when we are earnestly seeking 
after truth, although we may not as yet arrive at per- 
fect knowledge. The very fact that we have discov- 
ered some truth is evidence that we have seen God, 
though it may be onlv like trees walking. 

The apostle Paul said, "Know ye not that ye are 
the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- 
eth in von ? If any man defile the temple of God, 
him shall God destroy: for the temple of God is 
holy, which temple ye are," — or should be. Now is 



28 THE APEX 

there anything that we believe or know about God 
that did not originate in man, or did not come through 
the mediumship of man? For even Christ was a 
man : we have Scripture for the statement : — "As by 
man came death into the world, so by man came the 
resurrection from death.'' 

If it be argued that the ancient people who wrote 
the Scriptures were inspired, I would answer that men 
are also inspired in this day, for they have the Spirit 
of Truth, of whom Christ promised that he should 
come into the world, and who is even now being mani- 
fest in a general enlightenment of all men. The time 
has already come when no man needs to ask another 
if he knows the Lord, for all may know Him : He is 
near them, ready to enter heart and. mind. 

Let none say, the millennium will come later ! Let 
it not be said, there are four months and then cometh 
harvest time, for the people are all ready to be har- 
vested now, and it is just as easy for the worst as for 
the best: every one must surrender all, — all self- 
righteousness, all intent to sin. It is simply an initial 
act of volition as a starting-point, and after that — 
growth ! 

That which is born of flesh is flesh, or animal ; this 
is the teaching of science. That which is born of love 
for the Good is Godlike, and consequently immortal. 

If the teachings of Christ are not purely ethical, 
they are nothing; for a mysterious interpretation, 
taken from mysterious teachings, leaves a mystery, 
and a mystery is a non-entity. I believe that God was 
manifested in Christ; that these teachings of His 
were inherent in Him, and that He was the first spirit- 



WHAT IS GOD? 29 

ual man who was evolved or born of the great Source 
of all things. 

In the natural world we find many of the lower 
forms of life which are links in the chain of the pro- 
cess of evolution from the lowest types of animal life 
up to the highest type of human beings. Also among 
so-called human beings we find variations in intellec- 
tual and ethical development. So among our religious 
theories we have today all the first forms of religions 
ideas. Some of them are two thousand years old, and 
cannot be improved upon, while many of the new and 
refined beliefs are really very ancient, such as those 
which are distinguished by the practice of faith and 
prayer alone for the accomplishment of their purposes. 
These ideas are inferior to those which, were believed 
in and practiced six thousands years ago. 

The case of King Herod aptly illustrates some of 
the religious beliefs of the past. "And upon a set day, 
Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, 
and made an oration unto the people. And the people 
gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a God, and not 
of a man." It is a wrong and foolish idea, either in 
the religious or the political world, to suppose that a 
man who holds some office, no matter how high, is any- 
thing more than a servant of the people. With regard 
to Herod, we are told that "the angel of the Lord 
smote him, because he gave not God the glory." In 
striking contrast to this is the case of Peter, the apostle 
of that same time. After he had healed the lame 
man, and all the people were "filled with wonder and 
amazement," Peter said, "Why marvel ye at this? 
... as though by our own power or holiness we had 



30 THE APEX 

made this man to walk ?" He further told the wonder- 
ing people that it was through faith in Christ that the 
lame man had been cured. Peter believed that Christ 
could endow him with, or evolve within him a power, 
that would heal those who came to Him for healing. 
There are many in our own day who could have this 
power if they would exercise it. 

The faith that is accomplishing the most in this 
day is the inventive faith. There are men who are 
searching the heavens and the earth for clues that will 
carry them on to the completion of some useful ma- 
chine or device. They call to their support all the 
powers that be, both human and divine, to aid them 
in the accomplishment of their purpose. Every ele- 
ment in nature is experimented with. This is an ob- 
ject lesson to those w r ho think their prayers will be 
answered if they sit down and wait. 

In one of Mr. Drummond's addresses, he quotes Mr. 
Huxley as saying, "I protest that if some great power 
would agree to make me always think what is true, 
and do what is right, on condition of being turned into 
a sort of clock and wound up every morning, I should 
instantly close with the offer." Mr. Drummond then 
says : "The infinite desirability, the infinite difficulty 
of being good — the theme is as old as humanity. The 
man does not live from whose being the same confes- 
sion has not risen, or who would not give his all tomor- 
row, if he could close with the offer of becoming a 
better man. ... I propose to make that offer now. 
Tn all seriousness, without being turned into a clock, 
the end can be attained. Let me begin by naming, 
and in part discarding, some processes in vogue al- 



WHAT IS GOD? 31 

ready for producing better lives. The first imperfect 
method is to rely on Resolution. In will-power, in 
mere spasms of earnestness, there is no salvation. 
Struggle, effort and agony have their place in Christi- 
anity, but this is not where they come in. In mid- 
Atlantic, the other day, the Etruria, in which I was 
sailing, suddenly stopped. Something had gone 
wrong with the engines. There were five hundred 
able-bodied men on board the ship. Do you think that 
if we had all gathered together and pushed against the 
mast we could have pushed it on ? When one attempts 
to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to make his 
boat go by pushing against the mast." He goes on to 
give the formula: "You will find it in a letter — the 
second to the Corinthians: We all reflecting as in a 
mirror the character of Christ, are transformed into 
the same image from character to character — from a 
poor character to a better one, from a better one to one 
a little better still, from that to one still more com- 
plete, until by slow degrees the perfect image is at- 
tained." 

Here the solution of the problem of sanctification is 
compressed into a sentence: Reflect the character of 
Christ and you will become like Christ. Mr. Drum- 
mond adds that growth is not voluntary ; it takes place ; 
it happens ; it is wrought upon matter. "Ye must be 
born again," says Christ, "Be not conformed to this 
world, but be ye transformed," says the apostle. 

Some of the above ideas seem to me a little confused. 
Mr. Drummond says that the ship could not have been 
moved by pushing against the mast : but it might have 
been moved with large oars, or by the repair of the en- 



32 THE APEX 

gine, which would have been an act of volition on the 
part of the internal personality. He gives no formula, 
as I have done in another part of this book — a formula 
taken from Christ's own lips for the propagation of 
life or the new birth. He tells us we must keep on 
reflecting character indefinitely : Why ! people would 
all die and perish like the beast if they should attempt 
to do that. How can a person reflect character before 
being born — born from above ? 

Everything is ethical ; God is love ; He is as much 
our Father as He is the Father of Christ, when we are 
filled with love — and we may at heart be filled with 
love. This whole universe is filled with love as much 
as it is filled with air or electricity : we can see it in 
the solar system and in all the provisions of nature 
for our happiness. 

It is only necessary for us to be filled with love in 
order that we may see it all. Even death itself is not 
an evil to the old and feeble. As we increase in 
knowledge and love, all these things will be evident. 
It is this love — this infinite love that gives the long 
eternal life in exchange for this short life of nature. 
Evil is the chaos of good. 

In this new life God's part and man's part are clear- 
ly defined. God furnishes the sunshine and the rain 
— He furnishes the seed and sows it ; this is all that 
He will do. This He does for the evil and the good 
alike. The good man is he who has the honest or good 
heart — the good ground. He ploughs it and digs out 
the thorns and bushes and makes it ready for the seed. 
He receives the seed into his good, honest heart soil, 
and to the best of his ability keeps down the weeds and 



WHAT IS GOD? 33 

bushes that the good seed may grow and bear bounti- 
fully. 

In nature, whether a man has anything to harvest 
or not in the autumn depends entirely upon himself. 
Theology tells us that there is something mysterious 
about religion. I would reply that there is nothing 
that concerns us that is mysterious, — all is as plain as 
daylight can make it. God is continually doing His 
part, and man's part is certainly plain and easy. The 
good intention is the good ground that we must furnish. 
Perseverance in good intentions, with the best work we 
are able to do, is the cultivation of the soil, and we 
shall reap the harvest of character. Christ and the 
apostle Paul both taught that the spiritual life was 
dependent upon the natural body for its environment 
as the soil in which it must germinate and grow. 
Neither of them taught that a man's spiritual life is 
inherent. 

"Of the multitudes who confess Christianity," says 
Mr. Drummond, "how many have clear in their minds 
the cardinal distinction established by its founder be- 
tween "born of the flesh" and "born of the Spirit?" 
By how many teachers of Christianity even is not this 
fundamental postulate ignored? A thousand modern 
pulpits every seventh day are preaching the doctrine 
of Spontaneous Generation. . . . Let us place vividly 
in our imagination the picture of the two great king- 
doms of Nature, the inorganic and the organic, as these 
now stand in the light of the Law of Biogenesis. What 
essentially is involved in saying that there is no spon- 
taneous generation of life ? It is meant that the pas- 
sage from the mineral world to the plant or animal 



34 THE APEX 

world is hermetically sealed on the mineral side. This 
inorganic world is staked off from the living world by 
barriers which have never yet been crossed from with- 
in. No change of substance, no modification of environ- 
ment, nor any form of energy can endow an atom of 
the mineral world with the attributes of Life. And if 
there is one thing in nature more worth pondering for 
its strangeness it is the spectacle of this vast helpless 
world of the dead cut off from the living by the Law of 
Biogenesis and denied forever the possibility of re- 
source within itself. ... It is as if God had placed 
everything in heaven and in earth in the hands of Na- 
ture, but reserved a point at the genesis of Life for 
His direct appearing." 

Right here I think that we have discovered some- 
thing of immense value. If we say, as the Law of 
Biogenesis has always said, that life can only come 
from preexisting life, we are simply saying that pre- 
existing life must have had preexisting life continu- 
ally. God told Moses that His name was I AM : but 
the immortal term, or the proper formula is, — All life 
is or must be produced by present life, — life is always 
produced by generation. According to scientific teach- 
ing, the natural man is an animal, belonging to the or- 
ganic kingdom of nature, and will exist as long as the 
natural term of animal life, and who will finally re- 
turn to the earth whence he came. I do not see that 
there can be any alternative. 

If man desires to be born into the kingdom of God 
he must comply with the ethical teachings of Christ: 
these I have given, or shall give, in this book. Christ's 
teachings are the most reasonable that have ever been 



WHAT IS GOD? 35 

given to man, and they also correspond with the teach- 
ings of science. For as science teaches the Law of 
Biogenesis, so did He ; He taught it in that saying of 
His, so often repeated in varied forms: "Except yo 
become as little children ye shall in no case enter the 
kingdom of heaven" ; — if you wish to live in that high- 
er kingdom you must become like infants and be born 
into it. 

Let us see what the apostle Paul has written on this 
question: he says, "There is therefore now no con- 
demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," — in 
ether words, to those who obey His teachings, whose 
intentions are right, who "walk not after the flesh," — 
that is, not after the letter of the law, but after the 
Spirit, the intent of the law of love. 

Again he says: "For I know that in me (that is in 
my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is pres- 
ent with me ; but how to perform that which is good, I 
know not. ]STow if I do that I would not, it is no more 
I that do it but sin that dwelleth in m© ; for I delight 
in the law of God after the inward man. But the 
righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise ; 
the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy 
heart: that is, the word of faith which we preach: 
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord 
Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised 
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the 
heart man believeth unto righteousness ; and with the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation. So then, 
faith cometh by hearing," and hearing by the teachings 
of Christ. He further says : "I beseech you there- 
fore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present 



36 THE APEX 

your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto 
God, which is your reasonable service; and be not 
conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the 
renewing of your mind." 

I believe that all the New Testament Scripture 
teaches Biogenesis : and the central and vital truth of 
all the teachings of the New Testament is, first : — Sin- 
cere love for the Good as we strive to know it, even 
though limited by our short-sighted ideas of the im- 
mensity and the knowledge of God; second: — The 
practice of morality to the best of our ability and 
knowledge, minus any self-righteousness of our own. 
This must, of course, include love and service to our 
neighbor. All self-righteousness must be banished be- 
fore God can find room in our hearts. Many people 
have struggled along through the world without solv- 
ing this question ; they have lived moral lives, have 
loved God and the good, as they supposed, they have 
loved their neighbor, and have cast out every idol ex- 
cept this one of self -righteousness ; and that has put 
them on the level of the beast. 

We have no goodness, neither have we any ability 
except that which we have received from above, Even 
our desires and our wills have been given to us, so has 
everything except our ability to choose ; but some even 
reject or neglect that, and there is no difference be- 
tween neglecting a privilege and rejecting it. 



Ill 

THE HOLY GHOST 

IN the first chapter I have said that I would try to 
show that there is a Holy Ghost, but I have not 
tried, and shall not try to show that it is some 
mysterious personage without tangibility. We 
have seen that God is a tangible Being, making Himself 
manifest in men. The tangible existence of the Holy 
Ghost, and the fact that it can be seen and heard in 
society at the present day, can also be shown. It seems 
quite evident that the evolution of society from an 
uncivilized state to its present condition of Christian 
civilization is the result of the operation of the so- 
called Holy Ghost, which is, in fact, the principle of 
knowledge. It should be called the principle of 
knowledge that will throw light upon every question 
of the day, separating error from truth. 

Christ said, If I go not away the Comforter will 
not come to you ; but if I depart I will send Him un- 
to you from the Father, even the spirit of truth which 
proceedeth from the Father. 

This is the same spirit that will enable men to do 
greater works than Christ did in the line of surgery, 
medicine, chemistry, physical and mental sciences, 
theology and political economy, and it is this same 
Spirit of Truth that is developing the minds of our 
inventors ; for the inventor is seeking after truth. He 
tries one combination after another until he finds the 

37 



38 THE APEX 

right one — the perfect one : this is the spirit that ex- 
periments to know the truth, and the world is gradu- 
ally reaching it. 

It will also teach us the theological truth, eliminat- 
ing all the errors of the religious creeds, and show us 
the perfect road to eternal life. It will also in many 
ways exert its influence in a general evolution of man, 
in a greater ratio than ever known in past generations. 

I believe that the Holy Ghost will bo manifest by a 
most stupendous evolution of society, and is really all 
that its advocates have claimed for it, and even more 
than any one has ever imagined it to be : but I do not 
believe that this manifestation is something or any- 
thing that is not tangible to our reason.: — that is to 
say, we can understand what it means, just as we can 
understand what intelligence means. As the Holy 
Ghost is now interpreted it cannot be understood. 



IV 

THE NEW BIRTH 

MR. HENRY DRITMMOND, in his book, 
"Natural Law in the Spiritual World/' 
says: — 

"The passage from the Natural world to 
the Spiritual world is hermetically sealed on 
the natural side. The door from the inor- 
ganic to the organic is shut, no mineral can 
open it; so the door from the natural to the 
spiritual is shut and no man can open it. This 
Avorld of natural men is staked off from the spiritual 
world by barriers which have never yet been crossed 
from within. No organic change, no modification of 
environment, no mental energy, no moral effort, no 
evolution of character, no progress of civilization can 
endow any human soul with the attribute of Spiritual 
life. The Spiritual World is guarded from the world 
next beneath it by a Law of Biogenesis. Except a man 
be born again — except a man be born of water and of 
the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." 

Again he quotes Scripture : "He that hath the Son 
hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath 
not life. Life — that is to say — depends upon contact 
with Life. It cannot spring up of itself. It cannot 
develop out of anything that is not life. There Is no 
spontaneous generation in religion any more than in 
nature ; no life without antecedent life. ... In this 

39 



4 o THE APEX 

mythical theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the 
New Testament writers are agreed." 

He goes on to say that a moment's reflection ought 
to make it clear why in the Spiritual World there had 
to be added this mystery, the further mystery of its 
proclamation through the medium of revelation, and 
goes on to say : "This is the point at which the scien- 
tific man is apt to part company with the theologian." 
Again, in speaking of the natural man as the organ- 
ism, and God as the environment in the process of the 
new birth, he says: — "Where do organism and en- 
vironment meet ? How does that which is becoming 
perfect avail itself of its perfecting environment?" 
His answer is, "Just as in nature, the condition is 
simple receptivity. ... It is so simple that we will 
not act upon it. . . . But there is no other condition." 

Now, in my opinion, Mr. Drummond has ignored 
man's part, namely, the good soil, or good and honest 
heart : he has, however, come nearer to the truth con- 
cerning the teachings of Christ than any other writer 
with whom I am acquainted. To the average mind, 
however, and apparently to his own, there still remains 
a mystery. Now Christ taught no mysteries, all is 
plain. Sometimes we have to dig to find the treasure, 
but it is well worth the cost. To my mind there is 
nothing mysterious in the Parable of the Sower. 
Christ said, — Behold a sower went forth to sow, and 
some seed fell on good ground and sprang up and bare 
fruit an hundred-fold. We can imagine how his voice 
rang out as He said these things. That cry has been 
heard around the world, is still echoing, and will con- 
tinue to echo until it shall be heard above all the clam- 



THE NEW BIRTH 41 

or of this suffering earth. "He that hath ears to hear 
let him hear." This cry has the same ring as that 
other one of his when He said : "If any man thirst, let* 
him come unto Me and drink and never thirst again." 
The parable, He said, is this : The seed is the word of 
my teachings, — namely, the love for all things that are 
good, and love and service for thy neighbor. . . . The 
seed that fell into good and honest hearts, — hearts that 
had been prepared to receive it. 

There is no mystery about this new birth any more 
than there is about the birth of a plant or an animal. 
Christ told Nicodemus there was nothing wonderful 
about it ; He said. Wonder not at what I say to you, 
for I say this because you are not honest and sincere. 
You tell me that you believe I am a man sent from 
God, and that no man could do the works that I do 
unless God were with him. At the same time you are 
cowardly and dishonest, for you come to Me by night. 
You believe in Me and in my teachings, and you wish 
to be benefitted by Me, and at the same time to keep 
your former standing as a teacher. You wish to be an 
honest man ; be just w T hat you pretend to be, practice 
what you profess to believe, before I can do anything 
for you. In the condition in which you now are I can 
do nothing for you. 

Christ cannot save any one unless he be sincere, and 
that every one may be. 

To illustrate farther the propagation of the spirit- 
ual life, let us take the case of a man who had large 
possessions and who asked Christ, — calling him "Good 
Master," — What shall I do to inherit eternal life? 
Christ told him to keep the law, and the man replied 



42 THE APEX 

that he was keeping it. Then Christ told him to sell 
what he had and give it to the poor, and he should have 
treasure in heaven. Then he was to take up the cross, 
which was probably that of working for his living, just 
as millions are doing. This was not a large price to 
pay for eternal life. By this we see that Christ taught 
the distribution of wealth. He does not, however, call 
upon all men to give away their wealth, since all those 
who are engaged in any honest business, such as manu- 
facture or agriculture, are never called upon to give 
up their possessions, for capital is as necessary as la- 
bor. It is only when we worship our possessions that 
we are called upon to give them up. It is the sincere 
and honest intention, motive, heart, or mind, that is 
demanded of us. 

Further to illustrate this subject — for I wish to em- 
phasize the fact that we must honestly use our com- 
mon sense in considering the propagation of the spirit- 
ual life — let us take the case of the apostolic Paul. In 
the first place he was a church member after the strict- 
est sect, a zealous Jew and an educated man ; he was 
also a zealous persecutor of the Christians, and verily 
thought he was doing God service when he was killing 
them. "Now he was just the kind of man that God 
loves, for he was honest and sincere. That is the kind 
of man that all good people love!, the kind that is near 
to the kingdom of heaven, and the kind of man that 
will reach it first. Why? Because when he is con- 
vinced that he is right he goes ahead, and when he 
sees, after thorough investigation of the subject, that 
he is wrong, he stops, seeks after the truth, and when 
satisfied, goes ahead again. It may be asked, What 



THE NEW BIRTH 43 

has this to do with the new birth ? Much, in every 
way. When Paul saw the light he was not disobedi- 
ent to the heavenly vision. A "heavenly vision" is 
nothing more than what comes to us all when we have 
a conviction of wrong-doing and the necessity of 
changing our course. 

Do you ask, Where do God and Christ come in ? My 
answer is, they have always been ready at a moment's 
notice to do their part. We, as organisms or human 
beings, have only a small part in the work of salva- 
tion ; our environment, or God, as you please to call 
it, does the rest. Our own conscious opinion should 
be the best rule to go by in the question of duty ; for 
when we are honest and sincere, and actively engaged 
in the duties of life, we are on the road to the kingdom 
of God. 

Christ said, Come unto me and I will give you rest. 
The parables best illustrate the new birth. In the 
parable of the man who built his house upon a rock, 
we find a foundation that is very easy to understand, 
for Christ himself gives the explanation. . . . "Who- 
soever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I 
will liken him unto a wise man who built his house 
upon a rock." Now this foundation is the sincere in- 
tention and active determination, to the best of our 
ability, to know and practice what He taught. What 
did He teach ? He taught sincerity: this is the start- 
ing-point ; this is the new birth ; sincerity is the at- 
mosphere of heaven. When a man inhales this fra- 
grant air he may be sure he has entered into the king- 
dom of heaven. This is the foundation of God. On 
this foundation we can rest. The material of which 



44 THE APEX 

the house is to be completed is not of as much impor- 
tance as the foundation upon which it shall rest. Of 
course we must have some kind of material or we can 
have no house ; but whether it is good or bad, wood or 
stone, we should use the best of workmanship in its 
erection, for the perfect intention should be manifest 
in every part of the house, until it is all complete. 
Some may object to this definition on the ground that 
Christ himself is the only rock on which we must rest. 
It is thought by some that no new construction can be 
placed upon the teachings of Christ. In my opinion, 
the teachings of Christ, his example and his life, are 
our salvation. Even if it were possible that many of 
his sayings had been given to the world before his 
birth, their value would be none the less; and our 
faith is strengthened by his example through life, by 
his resurrection, and by his presence in the hearts and 
lives of his believers in our own day. 

In the parable of the Prodigal Son we see what 
Christ means by coming to him. It seems that when 
the prodigal realized the condition that he had brought 
upon himself, then and then only he came to himself. 
When a man is intoxicated he must first come to him- 
self before he can come to do anything else. So with 
the prodigal — after he had come to himself he made 
up his mind that he was making a great mistake in 
living away from his Father. He then said to him- 
self, "I will arise and go to my Father, and will say, 
Father, I have sinned against myself and against all 
Good, and against Thee, my good Father, and I am no 
more worthy to be called thy son. "Now make me a 
servant of thine, for this is all I deserve or desire." 



THE NEW BIRTH 45 

To come to Christ, then, is first to come to one's self 
and realize one's condition; second, to become like 
Him, in honest intention at least, and serve Him ; and 
to serve Him is to serve humanity, just as He did. 
This service may be performed in any honorable chos- 
en profession in life which we believe we are called on 
to enter. 



WHAT IS FAITH? 

SELF-KELIANCE, determination, concentra- 
tion — these are the chief elements of ordinary 
faith. We must believe in ourselves ; without 
this we shall accomplish very little. We never 
know what we can do till we try, but, on the other 
hand, we cannot always do what we think we can. A 
man may believe he can swim and yet be drowned in 
spite of his faith. Men have prayed and exercised 
faith that rocks might be moved from their door-yards 
nearly all their lives, without having them removed. 
They have failed to couple intelligent action with their 
faith. And yet, the results of faith within the mem- 
ory of those now living are innumerable. Take as an 
instance such a man as General Grant, who believed 
that he could conquer the Southern army in the war of 
the rebellion. While he knew that he had the re- 
sources at his command, he also knew that he must 
concentrate all his energies in the right direction, and 
this he could not have done without faith, and faith 
in himself. Faith sees the end in the beginning, sees 
the accomplished fact, just as the sculptor sees the 
image in the stone before he has placed his chisel upon 
it. Our inventors are, most of them, people of great 
perseverance and capable of intense concentration of 
mind. These qualities are necessary in any undertak- 
ing in life. I should say that faith and works are 

4 6 



WHAT IS FAITH? 47 

generally inseparable, but the initial faith is doubtless 
bare. In most cases we find there is an act connected 
with it, although it may be almost imperceptible. I 
think that sensitive people are affected by their sur- 
roundings much as Christ was when the woman 
touched the hem of his garment. This was an act of 
faith, and although but a trifling act on her part, the 
desired object was attained. We are told by Christ 
himself that one of the best illustrations of faith he 
had ever seen was that of the centurion who came to 
him and besought him to heal his servant who lay at 
home sick of the palsy. Jesus said, "I will come and 
heal him"; but the centurion replied, "I am not 
worthy that you should come under ray roof; but 
speak the word only and my servant shall be healed." 
He then gives his reasons for his faith, telling Christ 
that he himself was a man of, or with authority, hav- 
ing soldiers under him : "and I say to this man, Gro, 
and he goeth : and to another, Come, and he cometh : 
and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." Now 
this was equivalent to saying, I believe you are the Son 
of God, and that you have all the powers of the uni- 
verse at your disposal, and that you can send some agent 
or power to accomplish this cure just as I can exercise, 
in my inferior capacity, my authority over a few men. 

When men have the faith that it is their privilege 
to have, they will accomplish more than they have ever 
done before. When a number of people of strong con- 
centrative ability combine, they can accomplish won- 
ders. 

While Jesus was dining in the house of a rich 
Pharisee, a woman who was a sinner approached and 



48 THE APEX 

annointed his feet with ointment, the tears of peni- 
tence which she wiped away with the hair of her head, 
and the kisses of love, dropping upon them. Of her 
Christ says : "Her sins which are many are forgiven; 
for she loved much." To her he says, "Thy faith hath 
saved thee; go in peace." ... "I came not to call 
the righteous, but sinners to repentance," are his 
words. All he demands of us is a pure heart — good 
intentions. He does not expect us to become perfect 
in character all at once. This is why so many refuse 
his offer, because if they cannot become perfect at 
once they will not comply at all; they simply bury 
their talent in the ground. This is partly due to pub- 
lic opinion ; people do not wish to be considered hypo- 
crites, and knowing that the world expects perfection 
of character, they bury themselves until it is too late 
to remedy their error. This is why we need a differ- 
ent version of the gospel ; we want to offer people a 
heart religion, — one that will bring people heart to 
heart with God. 

After this the joining of any religious organization 
which they believe to be the best is a secondary matter. 
I have already said that true faith is always connected 
with an act, trifling it may be, but still an act of faith. 
It may be an action performed or a practice re- 
strained. Some, indeed, have been obliged to surren- 
der even their lives ; like the apostle Paul, they have 
not counted their lives dear unto them, satisfied that 
in losing the present, fleeting life, they were gaining 
an eternal, abiding one. 



VI 
GOD 

IT may be said that I have not proved the existence 
of God, but we really need only to prove the ex- 
istence of man in order to prove that there is a 
God. If we were not ourselves in existence there 
would be to us no God, neither could his existence be 
proved, nor would proof be necessary. We have, how- 
ever, a man to commence with for our first premise — 
the Han Christ Jesus. Christ was a man, and in all 
probability not different from other men, except in 
perfection, although even He said that His Father 
was greater than He, and that there was none good but 
one, that is His Father and our Father — His God and 
our God. 

'Now it is reasonable to say that every man has a 
God of some kind. Some men make a god of money ; 
some there are who worship high eating and drinking 
— offering up their bodies a living sacrifice to the god 
of intemperance. Others sacrifice themselves soul 
and body to the god of fashion ; these are only a few 
of the hundreds of gods that are worshipped by men, 
some even making gods of themselves. These latter 
are people of large self-esteem, who can see no superior 
to themselves. These are statements which need no 
proof to substantiate them, being self-evident facts. 
We can prove the existence of not only one God, but 
that of many gods. 

49 



50 THE APEX 

There is but one true and living God (to reiterate 
what I have already said), and He is the perfect God: 
far above man's comprehension, but not above man's 
ideal of perfection, using the word perfection in the 
fullest comprehension of its meaning. It may be 
asked, how do I know that there is a God who comes 
up to man's ideal of infinite perfection ? I answer, 
because man's God is always the counterpart of his 
highest desires and aspirations. You may say that 
this is visionary ; but is it visionary, or a plain state- 
ment of fact, to say that a man worships a wooden 
idol ? The idea and the ideal elevate the man ; but 
the man must first be elevated before he can have a 
high ideal, paradoxical as this may sound. We shall 
call attention later to this idea as brought out in the 
life of Helen Keller, to whose view a new world was 
brought when she first learned to connect words with 
the objects w T ith which she was already familiar. The 
elevation of our ideas and our ideals sometimes opens 
up to our vision a new 7 heaven and a new earth, and a 
God of a perfect law. Those who keep that perfect 
law with the full intent of the mind will live in that 
new world to w T hich their eyes have been opened, know- 
ing that whatever of good or ill may come in this pres- 
ent time, eventually it will be for their greatest good 
and happiness. 

The reason we do not enjoy more happiness in this 
world is because of our imperfection ; from the nature 
of things we cannot expect to be perfect except at 
heart. Take the case of a great inventor, like Mr. 
Edison, for instance. Were he possessed of perfect 
knowledge and ability, no invention would be beyond 



GOD 51 

his powers — not even the much-sought-after flying 
machine. So in the change of the heart ; we are only 
partly good — there is but a small fraction of perfec- 
tion in our entire system. 

These things we know: that we have a conscious 
existence; that there is another manifestation in this 
universe which w T e know surrounds us ; that this man- 
ifestation is of an infinite Power and Intelligence 
which we must call God or Law. This intelligent 
power is as evident in the universe as the intelligent 
mind is evident in the physical body of a human be- 
ing. We know that there is an intelligent mind con- 
nected w T ith the physical body, although we cannot see 
it with the natural eye so-called, but with the eye of 
reason. So, in the manifestations or phenomena of 
nature, if we use our reason, we can see evidences of a 
superior power, w 7 hich to a reasonable mind must ap- 
pear to be a perfect, intelligent law, or a perfect Spirit 
of love and power, as well as intelligence — not as Cre- 
ator, but as being immanent in all nature, or the soul 
of nature. The apparent evil in the world is like the 
evil attributed to money: money is a blessing when 
rightly used ; it is only evil when we worship it or use 
it for selfish or evil purposes. Christ said, 'My 
kingdom is not of this world' : in this saying He had 
a meaning other than that w 7 hich has been taught us 
by our religious teachers ; for He taught us to pray to 
the Father, 'Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on 
earth as it is in Heaven." 

We can neither know nor say that there is a human 
soul in existence, or a conscious human being — one 
who is conscious of his own existence, or of that of any 



52 THE APEX 

other human being except as we judge by our own 
experience, and by the manifestations of nature as we 
see these in the physical system. We say, there is a 
man. Why do we say this ? Because we see the nat- 
ural phenomenon of a man. We can as consistently 
say, in the light of our knowledge of the vast universe 
as we know it in this century, that there must be a liv- 
ing soul connected with it. As Herbert Spencer has 
said : "The whole universe seems to be alive." This 
kingdom of God that is to come, and even now is vis- 
ible on earth, is the scientific light which we see slow- 
ly, but in an ever increasing ratio shining all over the 
world. 

This kingdom is not a military kingdom, but a king- 
dom whose warriors will fight against false principles, 
ideas and practices; against ignorance and supersti- 
tion. Christ meant that His kingdom was not like 
the former kingdoms of this world : He did not mean 
that it would not come to this world. His mission is 
not to destroy men's lives, as has been done in the con- 
quest of one kingdom over another ; but to save men's 
lives as well as souls. His mission is not the destruc- 
tion of the world or the people of the world, but the 
destruction of the evil in the world, and the building 
up of a world of wisdom, virtue and happiness, where- 
in God may dwell and be seen and known. This 
building up of a new kingdom in the world does not 
imply the destruction of the old, but simply the re- 
modeling of a new one out of the old. Thus we see 
that nil tilings evil may be neutralized and utilized for 
the coming of the new kingdom. 

This new kingdom can never come to our conscious- 



GOD 53 

ness except as we become wise and virtuous. We can- 
not expect that all people will observe it, any more 
than we can expect that the dumb animals will observe 
it — it is only those who strive for it that may enter in. 

To illustrate more fully my meaning when I say 
that we can know God in His entirety, immensity, or 
fullness, in accordance with the teachings of Christ, 
and also in accordance with logic, let us take that say- 
ing of St. John, "God is Love." We may say that He 
is all the love as well as power that there is in exist- 
ence. Now Christ said: We will both come — that is, 
He and His Father — "We will come and make our 
abode with you, and sup with you and you with us." 
There are many other sayings similar to this; such 
as : "The Father is in me, and I in him." "He that 
seeth me, seeth him that sent me." "But the Father 
that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." 

How can God in all His immensity dwell in an in- 
dividual ? King Solomon of ancient time asked a sim- 
ilar question and answered it partially, but We can, 
perhaps, give a reasonable answer. Let us say that 
God is an infinite reservoir of love. Now let us repre- 
sent this reservoir of love by an immense reservoir of 
pure w r ater: now if we had connection by which we 
could be supplied with all the cool, pure water from 
this reservoir that we needed, would it not be equiva- 
lent to having the reservoir itself in our houses, con- 
stantly at hand for the supply of our needs ? Should 
we not have it all, to all intents and purposes ? 

When we become pure in heart we shall never thirst 
again ; all that is necessary is to keep connection with 



54 THE APEX 

this reservoir, and this is very simple and easy to do, 
— the weakest mortal can do it. 

Philip wanted to see the whole of God: (John xiv 
S) — this would be impossible with our short vision — 
more impossible than it would be for ns to see the most 
remote stars of the universe. Why did Christ say to 
Philip, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ?" 
Did Philip really see God when he looked at Christ ? 
Yes: because Philip was thirsting to see and know 
God, and Christ was his ideal of perfection. This 
was, no doubt, his second thought, after Christ had let 
the light into his mind. He had previously believed 
in an unknown something, just as people are doing 
today. 

We must have an internal consciousness of anything 
and everything, be it money, honor, life or even God 
Himself, before it can be real. The Ideal must first 
be photographed on the mind before it can be devel- 
oped an-d become real. 

It appears then that the most essential thing in life 
is a noble ideal. This is what we should fall dawn 
and worship and serve with all our hearts. In this 
way, and by perseverance, our ideal will grow and con- 
tinue to increase until in the eternal ages it will fill 
immensity with beauty and grandeur. 

To each one it is given to fight and win his own 
battles. God will bear us and our burden, but he will 
not remove it until his own good time. Christ also 
had his burden until the last hour when he cried out : 
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 



GOD 55 

Dark days sometimes overtake us, but the ?un shines 
beyond the clouds. 

I recognize no one as my superior in authority when 
I am told that I can know nothing of the so-called 
future, or of heaven, or of God. Neither do I recog- 
nize a belief in these without evidence. When people 
tell me that this world and this life end all ; that when 
our bodies die this will be the termination of our ex- 
istence ; that we cannot have an existence separate 
from the body, I must tell them that the present is, and 
always has been, the future of the past; that within 
me, or in some way connected with my natural body, 
I know there is a vitality more tenacious than flesh and 
blood that says, I will not die. It does not say, I do 
not desire to die, or I do not want to die, but it says, 
I will not die. How do I know this ? Because this is 
mv God : this volition of which I know that I am in 
possession : not lightly to be retained, but with the grip 
of a drowning man. . . . We have the treachery of 
our natural environment to contend with, and we must 
cling to our Life-buoy with all the powers of our be- 
ing. The God who is within us tells every one of us 
that sinceritv and honest intentions cannot be resisted, 
and if continued existence depends upon virtue, then 
our continued, practical, determined efforts must be 
successful in maintaining life, and also everlasting 
life. As it is in this present world, so it will be in all 
worlds ; Ave must take advantage of our environment, 
knowing that we can make to a great extent our own 
happiness or misery; realizing that individually we 



56 THE APEX 

increase our own happiness by laboring for the happi- 
ness of society, endeavoring also to teach others that 
they have the power within themselves which no one 
can give nor take away of creating their own world, 
their own God, and their own happiness. 



VII 

THE IMAGE OF GOD 

LET us for the present throw aside all precon- 
ceived ideas and all the authority of the 
Bible, and take the naked truth as it is re- 
vealed in the human mind; for here we 
shall, perhaps, find something as substantial as any- 
thing that we have ever found from any other source. 
For instance : when we judge people, saying that none 
are honest, that "every man has his price/' w T e imme- 
diately pass judgment upon ourselves. "Judge not 
that ye be not judged," are the words of the Master, 
and we are included in our own judgment. When we 
speak of every man, we must mean also ourselves ; and 
that this is the God in man is evident, for God cannot 
reverse this judgment. Again, in forgiving the debts 
of others to us, we forgive our own in that act. If you 
say that w r e have no power to forgive under such cir- 
cumstances, I would say that God cannot but imitate 
man, and it is our act of forgiveness to others that 
brings forgiveness to us. Again we see the God in 
man. 

How may we obtain eternal life ? By trying to in- 
crease life and happiness in ourselves and in others 
and in the world generally. The tendency of destruc- 
tion is to end all life. When we can see within our- 
selves a pure heart, we shall see the true God within 
our own person. A man may have a true idea of his 

57 



58 THE APEX 

farm, his buildings, his orchard, his cattle, as well as 
of his wife and children, if he have all these things in 
possession, although they may be many miles from 
him. Their image may be photographed so plainly 
upon his mind that he sees them perfectly. Some- 
times in dreams we see and talk with our friends, — 
those who are alive as well as those who have gone over 
on the other side. In like manner can we have the 
true God in our minds : He may be to us the most sub- 
stantial reality we have. To illustrate this point more 
fully, we will instance the miser who has a chest of 
gold hidden on his premises where he thinks no one 
will ever find it, and he says to himself: I will take 
comfort the rest of my days, for I have enough to last 
my lifetime without working for any one. Now this 
chest of gold is his god. . In all probability he will 
continue to accumulate more and to deprive himself of 
all the comforts of life, living and dying in the wor- 
ship of this chest of gold, which must be left to his 
heirs, if he have any. His god he cannot take with 
him, and it is with the greatest reluctance that he parts 
with it, going into the Unknown without a God and 
without, hope. Now where was his god, all the years 
of his life ? I affirm that it was in his mind, — it was 
the selfish satisfaction of the mind which made him 
leave the gold intact, never using it either for his own 
good or that of anyone else. He simply satisfied his 
own selfish heart; he simply said, "This gold is my 
god, it is all I want." It made him narrow, shrivelled 
him up, made him as nearly nothing as it is possible 
for any one to become. 

Turn now to the other side ; what effect does it have 



THE IMAGE OF GOD 59 

upon a man to worship the true God, after the fashion 
that Christ gave us ? It will transform him, make 
him in the image of God. The man who worships 
and serves this pattern that Christ gave us will be de- 
veloped into a being equal in every way to the Christ ; 
in other words, he will be changed into the same im- 
age. 

We can, then, prove that there is a true God by 
proving that there is, or has been, a true man; and 
even where the man is not, or has not been of absolute- 
ly perfect character, yet if he have a true heart, there 
you may behold the true God. Again I say that the 
existence of a true, good-hearted man is perfect evi- 
dence of the existence of the true and living God, for 
one could not exist without the other. One must be 
the Father and the other the son, and "all ye are breth- 
ren." This is what Christ meant when he told his dis- 
ciples that "He that hath seen me hath seen the Fath- 
er." 

We are all familiar with the law of gravity, but 
none of us have ever seen gravity, nor could even a sci- 
entific man tells us what it is, — yet its workings prove 
its existence. In like manner we believe that men 
have living souls inhabiting their bodies, although we 
have never seen a soul. We know that it exists by the 
manifestations of life in the man's acts. When we 
see the lifeless human body we say, the soul has left 
the body and it is dead. That is to say, the body is 
not the person, it is only the tenement in which the 
real man lived for a short time. Very often the soul 
is glad to leave the corruptible tenement of clay. What 
then is man ? He is the manifestation of God, he is a 



60 THE APEX 

part of God, he came out from God and will return to 
God. 

Is there in all the natural universe (outside of the 
human race) any evidence of intelligence that can be 
compared with the intelligence of the human race? 
There are, it is true, many manifestations of intelli- 
gence in creatures which perform winders of handi- 
work, — if we may call it so. This, however, does not 
imply creation; for God Himself is fearfully and 
wonderfully made, but without having been created. 
The conclusion, then, at which we have arrived is this: 
that Gocl is the Source of all things, the Ruler of all 
things ; and that wherever w T e see a manifestation of 
life w T e see a manifestation of God, — not always in 
full perfection, but in fullest perfection in the Man 
Christ Jesus. Men are in some sense a part of God, 
according to> their virtue. To love God, then, we must 
love virtue, love all good causes, do service either with 
hand or brain or purse, — in any and every way, and 
Jove our neighbor as ourselves. Thus shall we fulfil 
all the law and the gospel. 

In the course of one of his sermons, Rev. George 
Hepworth of New York tells of an interview with an 
architect, who said to him that he felt just as truly 
bound to be honest in building a house as a minister is 
to be sincere in his prayers. "If," said he, "I can 
show when the time of reckoning comes that I have 
put my soul into my work, I have no doubt about the 
welfare of that soul." This statement ought to be 
posted upon every rock by the wayside, in every public 
place, and should be framed and hung up in our living 
rooms, — for surely there can be nothing more concise 



THE IMAGE OF GOD 61 

upon the subject of religion. Do we realize that we 
cannot serve God in any other way than in our every 
day's labor ? Wherever we see an opening for honest 
labor, — or, in other words, for honest money mak- 
ing — we must engage in it as in God's service. If we 
are successful we shall be held accountable for the use 
we make of our success. If unsuccessful, we shall be 
rewarded for what we tried to do. 

"One of the ideas which give life its dignity and its 
interest is the fact that no experience stands by itself, 
but becomes a preparation for that which is to follow. 
In every successful career there is clearly revealed the 
close relation between the culmination of some striking 
achievement, and the fidelity, patience and courage 
which went before it. No man comes suddenly into 
any kind of supremacy. Every kind of superiority is 
the result of a thousand apparently unimportant and 
insignificant acts. Preparation for a great crisis is 
rarely made consciously. It is generally made by the 
person who is doing the w r ork of the day with the ut- 
most fidelity, without any idea that this fidelity is to 
find its reward in the possibility of a notable achieve- 
ment at the end. The experience of life is so adjusted 
to the development of character that everything which 
comes in the shape of opportunity or duty presents a 
test which there is no possibility of evading." 

"To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of 
eternal life," said Peter. "It is the spirit that quick- 
eneth, the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life," said 
Christ. 

"For God so loved the world that He gave his only 



62 THE APEX 

begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent 
not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but 
that the world through him might be saved." "He 
that believeth is not condemned ; but he that believeth 
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed 
in the Son of God." 



VIII 

THE NEW LIFE 

C HEIST said. Verily, verily I say unto you, He 
that believeth on me hath everlasting life. 
I am that bread of life. Your fathers did 
eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. 
He said again: I am the living bread which came 
down from heaven ; if a man eat this bread he shall 
live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my 
flesh, or my life, which I will give for the life and 
well-being of the world. And again, It is the spirit of 
my words that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing : 
the words that I speak upon you, they are spirit and 
they are life. Therefore said I unto you, that no man 
can come unto me except it were given him of my 
Father. 

This implies that God does give man the power, but 
not the choice. The choice, or volition, is in our own 
hands. He said these things because he knew there 
were some who did not believe his words. Those who 
eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ are those 
who have Him formed within them. They have lived 
in Him and partaken of Him, His personality, until 
thev have Christ's whole body formed within them- 
selves. They have shed or exfoliated the old person- 
ality and taken on a new personality. 

It seems quite plain to me that Christ intended to 
show that God, and the kingdom of heaven, and eternal 

63 



64 THE APEX 

life, as well as its environments, — such as the bread 
of life and the well of water, — were internal. For 
Jesus said to the woman of Samaria, "If thou knewest 
the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give 
me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of him and he 
would have given thee living water. The woman said 
unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the 
well is deep ; from whence then hast thou that living 
water ? Jesus said to her, Whosoever drinketh of this 
water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him, it shall be in him a 
well of water springing up unto everlasting life." 

Where else can we locate this well of living water 
except in our mind ? This well may be in every living 
person by his own volition. The existence of this liv- 
ing well within us may be as true and as real as any 
other experience of life. For instance, the normal 
condition of our mind is more real to our existence, 
the effect of reasonable evidence is more substantial 
and more material, than any abnormal condition. 
Again, we are all satisfied that under certain abnor- 
mal conditions and derangements people do really live 
a visionary life which to them seems to be real. Now 
the question is, Can we be sure that the living water is 
what it is said to be? The thought which I wish to 
convey at present is that this living water may be in 
the mind, which, for the time being, is the safest place 
for it to be in. We must take into consideration the 
fact that this water of life is a quality as well as 
quantity, for it has the quality of everlastingness. Be- 
cause we have it in our minds it will live forever, or 
as long as our souls exist; for if we should cease to 



THE NEW LIFE 65 

exist everything would cease to exist for us. We, be- 
ing a part of God, must exist as long as He exists. 

Mr. John Fiske, in his book, "Through Nature to 
God/' says: "What we call the soul, the mind, the 
conscious self, is something strange and. wonderful 
In our ordinary efforts to conceive it, invisible as it 
is," (I should like to substitute: as it seems,) "we are 
apt to try so strenuously to divorce it from the notion 
of substance that it seems unreal, ethereal, ghost-like. 
Yet of all realities the soul is the most solid, sound, 
and undeniable. Thoughts and feelings are the fun- 
damental facts from which there is no escaping. Our 
whole universe, from the sands on the seashore to the 
flaming suns that throng the Milky Way, is built up 
of sights and sounds, of tastes and odors, of pleasures 
and pains, of sensations of motion and resistance, 
either felt directly or inferred. This is no ghostly 
universe, but all intensely real as it exists in that in- 
tensest of realities, the human soul ! Consciousness, the 
soul's fundamental fact, is the most fundamental of 
all facts." 

How, then, can we have God in the consciousness ? 
I would answer, by cultivating in or within our con- 
sciousness the ideal Christ life in sincerity, — not 
Christ the man, but His teachings. Christ may be 
formed in a weak personality, but He can manifest 
Himself more powerfully in the large, robust humani- 
ty, and more perfectly in the soil of the sinful con- 
sciousness, for the heart that is fertile enough to pro- 
duce enormous weeds of sinfulness is rich enough to 
produce an enormous harvest of Christian character 



66 THE APEX 

when thoroughly cultivated: for where sin abounds 
grace can much more abound. 

It is said by some, and by our teachers among the 
number, that we must first receive the seed; but I 
would say that we must prepare the heart first, by dig- 
ging out the roots of sin before we can receive the seed, 
— or both must be done at the same time, — and then 
the thorns and weeds must be kept down to the end of 
the harvest. 

In another chapter of the book above quoted, Mr. 
Fiske beautifully describes the restfulness to the soul 
of a "daisied field in June." He speaks of the matin 
songs of the birds, the luxuriant splendor of noon-tide, 
the "more pensive time when long shadows are thrown 
eastward — " when the "solemn mantle of darkness" 
falls upon the earth. After dwelling upon the sense 
of unalloyed happiness which the contemplation of 
nature's beauties brings to the mind, he turns to the 
other side — to the tragedies of natures — the preying of 
the hawk upon the bird, of the bird on the worm, the 
"black injustice — a savage disregard for others" which 
are part of the general scheme of nature, and adds : — 
"We find that this hideous hatred and strife, this 
wholesale famine and death, furnish the indispensable 
conditions for the evolution of higher and higher types 
of life. Nay more, but for the pitiless destruction of 
all individuals that fall short of a certain degree of 
fitness to the circumstances of life into which they are 
born, the type would inevitably degenerate, the life 
would become lower and meaner in kind." 

This view of God's or nature's, process of evolution 
seems the same idea that Christ taught when he said, 



THE NEW LIFE 67 

"To him that hath shall be given" ; but eventually it 
will not be those who have the most in quantity but 
those who have the best in quality who will have the 
"abundance" promised to those who have. For Christ 
evolved the idea that the fittest were the most virtuous, 
— at least at heart, — which would increase the possi- 
bility of the survival of a larger number of the human 
race than would be the case among the lower forms of 
life. 

Mr.- Fiske says again, "When Mr. Huxley asks us 
to believe that 'the cosmic process has no sort of rela- 
tion to moral ends/ I feel like replying to the question, 
Does not the cosmic process exist purely for the sake 
of moral ends ? Subtract from the universe its ethical 
meaning, and nothing remains but an unreal phantom, 
the figment of false metaphysics. "Likewise, subtract 
from the teachings of Christ their ethical meaning, 
and we have pagan idolatry. "What is the ultimate 
goal of the ethical process ?" Mr. Fiske goes on to 
ask. "According to the utilitarian philosophy, that 
goal is the completion of human happiness. But this 
interpretation soon refutes itself. A world of com- 
pleted happiness would be a world of quiescence ; the 
dynamics of evolution would have no place in it. But 
suppose we say that the ultimate goal of the ethical 
process is the perfecting of human character? This 
form of statement contains far more than the other. 
Consummation of happiness is a natural outcome of 
the perfecting of character, but that perfecting can 
be achieved only through struggle, through discipline, 
through resistance. It is for him that overcometh that 
the crown of life is reserved." 



68 THE APEX 

Now, this testimony from a scientific man of the 
latest school is nothing more than the truth Christ 
taught many years ago. But He taught us more ; He 
taught us the philosophy of the birth, growth, and 
possible degeneration of the human soul. Again he 
says: "All life upon the globe, whether physical or 
psychical, represents the continuous adjustment of in- 
ner to outer relations. The degree of life is low or 
high according to the correspondence between internal 
and external relations ; is simple or complex, perfect 
or imperfect. Every stage of enlargement has had 
reference to actual existence outside. . . . There was 
a critical moment in the history of our planet, when 
love was beginning to play a part hitherto unknown, 
when notions of right and wrong were germinating 
in the nascent Human Soul, when civilization was to 
be superadded to organic evolution. At that critical 
moment we see the nascent Human Soul vaguely 
reaching forth toward something akin to itself, not in 
the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal 
presence beyond. An internal adjustment of ideas 
was achieved in correspondence with an Unseen 
World. . . . Now if the relation thus established in 
the morning twilight of man's existence between the 
Human Soul and a world invisible and immaterial is 
a relation of w T hich only the subjective term is real, 
and the objective term is non-existent, then, I say, it 
is something utterly without precedent in the whole 
history of creation. Every stage of enlargement has 
had reference to actual existences outside. The eye 
was developed in response to the outward existence of 
radiant light, the ear in response to the outward ex- 



THE NEW LIFE 69 

istence of acoustic vibrations, the mother's love came 
in response to the infant's needs ; everywhere the in- 
ternal adjustment has been brought about so as to har- 
monize with some actually existing fact." 

If, as Mr. Fiske says, for the development of any 
faculty in nature, the internal adjustment is necessary 
for the completion of the actual fact, then, I say, this 
corresponds exactly with the teachings of Christ when 
He said, "The pure in heart (or mind) shall see God." 
We know that the eye must be perfect before it can see 
perfectly, that only if the ear is perfect, can we hear 
perfectly — and so if, in his own words, our intellectual 
eyes are single or perfect, our whole bodies or souls 
will be full of light. This, then, is the central fact. 
Nothing outside of ourselves can be real to us until 
Ave ourselves are changed, and this change can be made 
only by our evolution from darkness to light by our 
own volition. 

The masses, at present, are like the blind man who 
said he could see men as trees walking. He could see 
moving objects, but could not distinguish the shape; 
for when the men stood still he could not tell whether 
they were trees or men. We can comprehend some- 
thing of this law of internal and external relations ev- 
ery day of our lives when we consider that nearly all 
the thoughts of our lives are caused by some external 
relation which we are called to consider or pass judg- 
ment upon or decide. We make our plans never so 
perfect, — some trifling external information will 
cause a complete change in our actions. 

"In the process of spiritual evolution, evil must 
needs be present," says Mr. Eiske ; "but the nature of 



70 THE APEX 

evolution also requires that it should be evanescent. 
In the higher stages, that which is worse than the best 
need no longer be positively bad." I should say that 
this can never be said of the intention or heart, as it 
is called, but it may be said of the character at any 
stage of evolution. Let us follow this author's thought 
further; — "The mystery of evil remains a mystery 
still, but it is no longer a harsh dissonance such as 
greeted the poet's ear when the doors of hell were 
thrown open ; for we see this mystery belongs among 
the profound harmonies in God's creation. Many are 
the pains of life, and the struggle with wickedness is 
hard ; its course is marked with sorrow and tears. 
But assuredly its deep impress upon the human soul is 
the indispensable background against which shall be 
set hereafter the eternal joys of heaven!" 

In these words we have the mystery of evil solved ; 
it is the indispensable background of the picture of the 
kingdom of heaven. In fact, the animal man is a large 
part of the environment of the soul. The human heart 
is the soil in which the spiritual soul lives and grows ; 
fertile from the very fact that it is full of impurities. 
But these evils may all be, and will be, utilized in the 
evolution of the soul. In the catalogue of crime we 
can see that it is not what we do but what we intend to 
do, in many cases, that constitutes the crime. Some- 
times that faculty of the mind that would normally be 
a virtuous faculty is perverted or uncontrolled until it 
becomes vicious. Take, for instance, the faculty of 
combativeness in its normal development ; it is virtu- 
ous, for with this faculty we defend ourselves, our 
opinions, our homes, our neighbors and our country. 



THE NEW LIFE 7 i 

and in the use of this faculty we are sometimes forced 
to kill. This process is going on in the world almost 
unobserved in society at present. In the competition 
of labor the weakest are thrust aside, and they and 
their families suffer the privations that kill. Now to 
be industrious is a virtue, but to take the work that 
another man needs more than we do is a crime. 

All evil, then, is the perversion of good, either wil- 
fully executed or uncontrolled. There are also sins 
of ignorance which will exist until we are enlightened ; 
it is impossible, under present circumstances, but that 
offences must come, but woe unto the men by whom 
they come ! One of the most patent of these offences is 
the tenacity with which the Rum kingdom holds the 
reins of government. ~No man can be justified in its 
sale by saying, "It will always be sold, and if I do not 
sell it, some one else will." 

All evil will eventually be utilized by the good, just 
as the lily in its growth utilizes the damp, black soil, 
— black with the decayed leaves of centuries from 
which it draws food and drink, inhaling also the poi- 
sonous gases from the atmosphere — and there is noth- 
ing more pure and beautiful in nature than the lily. 
The saying, "That which is worse than the best need 
no longer be positively bad," is true in practical life 
in the present conditions of civilization, for it may 
well be said, There is none good but one : One, that is 
God. We may condemn evil as evil, but we must not 
condemn those honest-hearted people who are struggling 
to overcome their besetting sins, no matter how sinful 
they may be, as long as there are indications of a pur- 
pose to reform ; some of them are the best hearted peo- 



72 THE APEX 

pie in the world, for they love much, and sometimes 
make the best citizens either in this world or the next. 
The apostle Paul says: "Por I know that in me (that 
is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing : for to will is 
present with me; but how to perform that which is 
good, I know not. So then, with the mina I myself 
serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of 
sin!" 

There is therefore now no condemnation to those 
who with the mind obey the law or teachings of 
Christ, not to the letter morally, but with the perfect 
heart or intention, or, as He Himself says, mind. 

One cannot fail to discover the analogy between the 
evolution of the natural mind from childhood to age, 
and the evolution of the spiritual life as far as we 
can observe it, although we presume that the develop- 
ment of the latter life is infinitely slower than that of 
the former. I have been more than ever forcibly im- 
pressed with this analogy since reading a sketch of 
the life of Miss Helen Keller, written by herself, 
which seems as wonderful as any historical miracle. 
In writing about the dawn^ of her intellect, she says : 

"I did not know what the future held of marvel 
or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed 
upon me continually for weeks, and a deep languor 
had succeeded this passionate struggle. Have you 
ever been at sea in a dense fog when it seemed as if 
a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great 
ship, tense and anxious, groped her way towards the 
shore with plummet and sounding line, and had no 
way of knowing how near the harbor was ?" At this 
time, when she was about seven years old, the wordless 



THE NEW LIFE 73 

and sightless cry of her soul was, "Light ! Give me 
Light! And the light of love shone on me in that 
hour. I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out 
my hand, as I supposed to my mother. Some one 
took it, and I was caught up and held close in the 
arms of her who had come to reveal all things, and 
more than all else, to love me." She had learned 
from this teacher, Miss Sullivan, to spell many words, 
but had confounded the word m-u-g and the word 
w-a-t-e-r. But one day she and her teacher walked 
down to the well house: "Some one was drawing 
water and my teacher placed my hand under the 
spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she 
spelt into the other the word 'water' first slowly, then 
more rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed 
upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a 
misty consciousness of something forgotten — a thrill 
of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of 
language was revealed to me. I knew then that 
w-a-t-fr-r meant the wonderful, cool something that 
was flowing over my hand. That living word awak- 
ened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy; set it free! 
There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that 
could in time be swept away. I left the well house 
eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each 
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned 
to the house every object which I touched seemed to 
quiver with life. That was because I saw everything 
with the strange, new sight which had come to me. 
. . . . As my knowledge of things grew, I felt 
more and more the delight of the world I was in." 
This "world" was the new kingdom into which she 



74 THE APEX 

had just been born. She continues : "Thus I learned 
from life itself. At the beginning I was only a mass 
of possibilities. It was my teacher, who unfolded 
and developed them. When she came everything 
about me breathed of love and joy and was full of 
meaning. She has never let pass an opportunity to 
point out the beauty that is in everything." 

JSTote the words, "'As my knowledge of things grew 
I felt more and more the delight of the world I was 
in." This of the natural, external world: but what 
shall we say of those who have never had their 
spiritual vision or hearing developed ? This spiritual 
world is as tangible to me as the world of nature into 
which this child so suddenly entered, and it also may 
be entered by the same process by which she entered 
into her world. This world is indeed beautiful, but 
we shall come to the end of it sooner or later, and al- 
though some of us enjoy it for many years, there are 
countless numbers whose lives are lives of suffering 
from one cause or another. But in this spiritual 
world into which we may all enter, we learn of a bet- 
ter time coming, and that we may have an eternal 
life in exchange for the animal life. For the words 
of Christ even now usher us into eternal life when He 
tells us that God is our Father. 



IX 

THE DESTINY OF MAN 

HE must be a bold man who will undertake to 
solve the problem of the destiny of man : but 
something in that direction is certainly need- 
ed to satisfy the thirst of the human soul. 
An old proverb tells us that we ought not to try to 
cross the bridge until we come to it, but it is for our 
benefit sometimes at least to know what the bridge is. 

To be existent, — to know at this moment, that you 
have a conscious identity, — is the most positive evi- 
dence of immortality. There are evidences within our 
own. observation of long ages of previous existence in 
some of the lower forms of life, arid as we look 
around us in nature we find that there is evidence even 
on this planet of almost infinite age. The rocks speak 
to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see ; they 
tell us of the countless years since they were in a melt- 
ed mass, and if we had the right development of brain 
we could see much more than we can now of this evi- 
dence of innumerable ages in the past, when we were 
dormant in the lap of nature. What is it that has 
made us what we are ? It has become a commonplace 
that it is God that has done all this, for "without Me 
ye can do nothing !" Nothing is more true than this ! 
"There is," says Mr. Drummond, "in the spiritual or- 
ganism a principle of life ; but that is not self -exist- 
ent. It requires a second factor, a something in 

75 



76 THE APEX 

which to live and move and have its being, an en- 
vironment. And what is the spiritual environment ( 
It is God." . . . "When a piece of coal is thrown on 
the fire we say that it will radiate into the room a cer- 
tain amount of heat. This heat, in the popular con- 
ception, is supposed to reside in the coal and to be set 
free during the process of combustion. In reality, 
however, the heat energy is only in part contained in 
the coal. It is contained just as truly in the coal's en- 
vironment — that is to say, in the oxygen of the air. 
The atoms of carbon which compose the coal have a 
powerful affinity for the oxygen of the air. Whenever 
they are made to approach within a certain distance of 
one another, by the initial application of heat, they 
rush together with inconceivable velocity. The heat 
which appears at this moment comes neither from the 
carbon alone nor from the oxvgen alone. These two 
substances are really inconsumable, and continue to 
exist after they meet in a combined form, as carbonic 
acid gas. . . . Without Environment the soul is as 
the carbon without the oxygen, as the fish without the 
water, as the animal without extrinsic conditions of 
vitality. It is certain that in most cases the larger 
debt is due to an invisible environment." 

It is at this point that I object to the religious 
teachings of the day, both old and new, — except just 
what Christ taught, and, unfortunately, he is not 
taught by the teachers of the day, — for we need no 
longer believe in an invisible environment! 

To prove what man is and what God is, and what 
the destiny of both by scientific evidence, should be 
easy, for Mr. Drummond, who was himself a scientist 



THE DESTINY OF MAN 77 

as well as a Christian, has given us the answer in the 
above-quoted passage. Of those who believe in God 
I would ask the following questions. The coal or car- 
bon which represents the human soul — is it not vis- 
ible ? Is not oxygen visible or tangible ? Are not both 
inconsumable? Which is the most valuable, coal or 
oxygen, or are both equally valuable? Coal alone 
never could produce heat, neither alone could oxygen, 
or environment. Again, the fish could not exist with- 
out the water ; the water might exist without the fish, 
but is not the fish a factor ? Which is highest in the 
scale of existence ? Man cannot live without air, f 00VI, 
and many other things which form his environment. 
Which is the greatest factor, man, or the natural en- 
vironment ? How about the soul of man — is it not an 
important factor ? In other words, is not coal the en- 
vironment of oxygen as much as oxygen is the environ- 
ment of the coal? As we look around upon nature 
and her forces we are sometimes inclined, like the sav- 
age tribes of men, to stand in awe of the elements 
around us, and to feel sometimes that we can see the 
manifestations of God in the lightning and in the 
tornado, and even in the diseases which people used 
to think were sent into the world by some unseen de- 
mons or gods, but men are learning how to harness 
these demons or gods, and are making them useful in- 
stead of harmful. 

In saying that man is the highest and most impor- 
tant factor in environment, I do not in the least de- 
grade infinity, but simply place man at the head. 
Christ made the same statement when He said, "he 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father," and yet, He 



78 THE APEX 

said, "you continue to ask me to show you the Fath- 
er." People will continue to believe that God is in- 
visible, scientists will still explore the universe to find 
Him, but in order to know the destiny of man we must 
seek farther. Let me illustrate not what man is, but 
what it is possible for him to become. It is said that 
there is, in a large bookstore in New York City, a 
small colored lad who works there and who has locatdd 
in his mind every book in that store. This lad has a 
duplicate bookstore in his mind. Just so we can have 
the kingdom of God within us. There are not, then, 
any factors more essential or more lasting than we may 
become. If there are, let those who can do so produce 
them — man is the environment of all the other factors. 
Christ and God and the kingdom of heaven formed 
within you, not you in God, not you in Christ — it does 
not say that, — but rather, Christ forme® within you 
the hope of eternal life. The natural tendency of vir- 
tue, knowledge, is better circumstances. Eternal life 
is a quality of life ; a perfect quality of life is immor- 
tal. Christ prohibited our speculations on the dura- 
tion of our existence when He said : "Take no anxious 
thought for the morrow" : He did not say we must not 
be anxious for the present time; no one can live in 
future time until it comes, and our present is the re- 
sult of the past. Emerson has said : "One of the illu- 
sions is that the present hour is not the critical, de- 
cisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is 
the best day in the year. No man has learned any- 
thing rightly until he knows that every day is dooms- 
day. He only can enrich me who can recommend me 
the space between sun arid sun. 'Tis the measure of 



THE DESTINY OF MAN 79 

a man, his appreciation of a day." Another writer 
says : "No person is strong enough to stand the strain 
of today^s duties, and all the load of tomorrow's anxie- 
ties piled upon the top of them." The idea is well 
expressed in the simple lines : — 

"Let me be strong in word and deed 

Just for today; 
Lord, for tomorrow and its need 
I must not pray!" 

It has not been my intention, in anything I have 
written, to imply that I do not recognize an Almighty 
Father of all men and ruler of all things, I believe 
He is the perfect Almighty Law of life and love, but 
at the same time I believe that man must conform to 
Grod, for He will never conform to man. Science 
teaches us that the human race as we now see it has 
been developed from the savage state. It teaches us 
also that we are still animals, and the natural character 
finds its limits within the organic sphere. In dealing 
with a person of fine moral character, we are dealing 
with the highest achievement of the organic kingdom, 
but as Mr. Drummond says: "In dealing with the 
spiritual man we are dealing with the lowest form of 
life in the spiritual world : to contrast the two, and 
wonder that one is apparently so little better than the 
other, is unscientific and unjust. The spiritual man 
is a mere unformed embryo, hidden as yet in his earth- 
ly chrysalis case, while the natural man has the breed- 
ing and evolution of ages represented in his charac- 
ter." 

Mr. Fiske says: — "The savage's primeval ghost 
world is always mixe'd up with his childlike notions of 



8o THE APEX 

what he ought to do ; in their beginnings theology and 
ethics were inseparable ; in all the vast historic devel- 
opments of religion they have remained inseparable, 
The grotesque conceptions of primitive man have giv- 
en place to conceptions framed after wider and deeper 
experience, but the union of ethics with theology re- 
mains undisturbed even in that most refined religious 
philosophy which ventures no opinion concerning the 
happiness or misery of a future life, except that the 
seed sown here will naturally determine the fruit to be 
gathered hereafter. All the analysis that modern 
knowledge can bring to bear upon the theory of a fu- 
ture life points to the opinion that the breach of physi- 
cal continuity is not accompanied by any breach of 
ethical continuity. Such an opinion relating to mat- 
ters beyond experience cannot of course be called sci- 
entific, but whether it be justifiable or not, my point 
is that neither in the crude fancies of primitive men 
nor in the most refined modern philosophy can theolo- 
gy divorce itself from ethics. Take away ethical sig- 
nificance from our conceptions of the Unseen world 
and the quasi-human God, and no element of signifi- 
cance remains. All that was vital in theism is gone." 

Mr. Fiske has given great weight to ethics in re- 
ligion, but he has skipped over the important truth 
that there can be no unseen world except to those who 
cannot see it. If no one has ever seen this world it is 
indeed unseen ; and again, if no one knows there is an 
unseen world, it is an unknown world. 

Now I believe that Mr. Fiske is on the right track 
in the computation of this problem; but instead of 
using his term "the Unseen World" I should say the 



THE DESTINY OF MAN 81 

Ethical World, and for the "quasi-human Gdd" should 
substitute the Ethical God. We know that there is a 
world of ethical meaning in the teachings of Christ, 
and that mankind can live and be happy, for even in 
this world we are governed by this ethical law, and 
this same law that was given to us by Christ will ex- 
tend into all worlds and into all time. St. John ex- 
pressed it clearly when he wrote his first verse: "In 
the beginning was the (Ethical) Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God." 

One of the statements attributed to Christ has al- 
ways had great significance to me — a statement which 
Tie made to the man who came to Him by night, name- 
ly : "That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that 
which is born of the spirit is spirit." And in addition 
to this one statement with which I am so forcibly im- 
pressed, all His teachings are imbued with the same 
idea, neither is there lacking evidence from other 
sources. Science teaches us that man is nothing but 
an animal, and perishes, both mind and body, like 
other animals. Since natural science has proved one 
part of this statement — "That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh" — it certainly ought to be the duty of be- 
lievers to prove the other part to be true. I have 
shown that there can be no preexistent life, that is to 
say, in the sense of one life creating another life. It 
is also true that all existence is present existence, that 
it is past, present, and future blended in one eternal 
Now. Neither man nor God can live more than one 
moment at a time, in the common idea or acceptance 
of time, for time is merely an imaginary point or line 
on the chart of eternity. 



82 THE APEX 

When Moses enquired of God about what he should 
say to the children of Israel about his personality and 
name, it is said that God told him to call him by the 
name I AM. Again, when Christ was discussing the 
question of the hereafter and the resurrection of the 
dead with the Jews, he quoted some Old Testament 
scripture to them, namely : "I am the God of Abra- 
ham, of Isaac, arid of Jacob. Therefore he is not the 
God of the dead but of the living, for all live unto 
him." JSTow, when he said I AM, he meant now. He 
did not say, I was, he did not say, I shall be, but when 
he said I AM, it implied present and future. The 
fact then that a thing exists is evidence of its future 
existence after its kind. The mineral, vegetable, ani- 
mal, spiritual, each in its own kingdom after its kind, 
each one will live and progress in its own kingdom. 
It appears then, that to exist as a mineral or an animal 
is not the eternal life we are after. Life of the true 
sort is something more than 'duration or quantity ; it 
does mean this, but this alone would be worthless if 
we were miserable. The spiritual life is a peculiar 
quality of life ; it is a life that will satisfy all the de- 
mands of our being even beyond our imagination. 
When we have this new life in this world it is not so 
great a change as some have supposed ; it is an addi- 
tion. We can enjoy all that is good in the naturaf 
kingdom, and added to this is the enjoyment of the 
mind in the spiritual kingdom. 

This life is the present coridition of the mind. This 
can be best understood by comparison ; on the one side 
we will place the imbecile, or low grade human animal, 
and on the other side place the most noble specimen of 



THE DESTINY OF MAN 83 

the animal man ; which one would the ordinary man 
choose to be? Now there is not much difference be- 
tween the two in the natural or physical life : but there 
is an infinite difference between the most noble natural 
man and the spiritual man, even in this world or in 
this life, by the testimony of thousands of people who 
have passed from death unto life. 

Mr. Henry Drummond, writing upon the subject of 
Spiritual Life and Degeneration, says: "There are 
certain burrowing animals — the mole, for instance — 
which have taken to spending their lives beneath the 
surface of the ground, and Nature has taken her re- 
venge upon them in a thoroughly natural way — she 
has closed up their eyes. If they mean to live in 
darkness, she argues, eyes are obviously a superfluous 
function. By neglecting them, these animals make it 
clear they do not want them. And as one of nature's 
first principles is that nothing shall exist in vain, the 
eyes are presently taken away, or reduced to a rudi- 
mentary state. This is the meaning of the favorite 
paradox of Christ, "take therefore the talent from 
him." No sleight-of-hand can rob religion of a pres- 
ent, the immortal nature of a now. When one exam- 
ines the Crustacea which have inhabited for centuries 
the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, one is 
at first astonished to find these animals apparently en- 
dowed with perfect eyes. The pallor of the head is 
broken by two black pigment specks, conspicuous in- 
deed as the only bits of color on the whole blanched 
body ; and these to the casual observer certainly repre- 
sent well-defined organs of vision. But what need of 
eyes in these Stygian waters ? There reigns everlast- 



84 THE APEX. 

ing night. Is the law for once at fault? A swift 
incision with the scalpel, a glance with the lens, and 
their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. 
Externally they are organs of vision — the front of the 
eye is perfect : behind, there is nothing but a mass of 
ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and 
insensate thread. These animals have organs of vis- 
ion, and yet they have no vision. Exactly what Christ 
said of men : they have eyes but no vision." 

As I have already, in my chapter on the New Birth, 
given in as concentrated a form as possible the formula 
of the new birth or the new generation, I will, by quot- 
ing from the Apostle Paul, try to give a concentrated 
idea of the growth of the spiritual body. "Though I 
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal." From all the information we can derive 
from all known sources, we learn that if we are seek- 
ing after eternal life we must, with all the energy we 
possess, love and serve all that is Good, and love our 
neighbor as ourselves. This formula includes all that 
is essential in religion. No man can prove that there 
is any other God than the God of Love and Goodness, 
and those who wish to keep you in ignorance of this 
fact are enemies to you. There is no mystery about 
this religion : it includes a knowledge of God, for God 
is good, and God is love. Love will fulfill all the law 
and the gospel. Every one may understand this with 
the exercise of a little reason. It will not hinder any 
one from joining any society or church which he may 
see fit to join, neither will it force any one into any 
society or church that is not congenial to him. The 



THE DESTINY OF MAN 85 

idea that Christ tried to enforce with the strongest em- 
phasis was expressed in His answer to the disciples 
when they asked Him if there were few that could be 
saved. His answer was: "Strive to enter in at the 
strait gate ; for many I say unto you will seek to enter 
in and shall not be able." This is a law of nature. 
Only those who concentrate all their powers upon the 
accomplishment of any purpose or object in this world 
will succeed. The laws of the spiritual world, as 
Christ taught them, correspond with natural law in 
every case. 



IX 



LIFE AND DEATH 

WE often hear the question asked, Is there 
any conceivable way by which death can 
be abolished, practically, for you and for 
me ? I would say, yes : for life never had 
a beginning, and consequently will never have an end. 
Life, like everything else, is simply present existence. 
What we call death is only a change of circumstances. 
Death does not always occur under circumstances over 
which we have no control, for we frequently have' the 
privilege of deciding between life and death, so-called. 
Life, like death, is not something of the past, neither 
is it of the future. Life is always life, death is the 
absence of life. After we have had a decayed tooth 
extracted with which we have suffered much pain, we 
do not say that we have lost any part of our life by 
the removal of the suffering member. If we should 
have both arms and both legs removed, we might pos- 
sibly live if we possessed a strong constitution — we 
might, indeed, in some cases preserve life by having 
them removed. We know that the whole universe is 
full of life, not future but present life. Neither Grod 
nor man can live in other than present life, and no one 
can define death, unless we should define it as a 
vacuum. 

Death is the final removal of the painful or the de- 
caying part of the human soul. Just as we remove 

86 



LIFE AND DEATH 87 

the decaying tooth or the decaying limb from the liv- 
ing body, so the final disintegration of the human body 
relieves the soul of its earthly environments. This 
body that has decayed is not the soul ; it never was the 
soul; but the soul was the life of the body and con- 
trolled it as long as it was a fitting place or tenement to 
inhabit. The soul or mind controlled the body within 
the limits of natural law — all things are controlled by 
law, both God and man. We shall yet look upon the 
body which we once inhabited as we now do upon some 
dismembered portion of it, with feelings of relief. 

If w T e have no immortal life abiding in us, then the 
natural life must end our existence, as Christ has said 
corruption cannot inherit incorruption. 

Finally, I wish to reiterate that all our possibilities 
are within us : that is to say that life, anld heaven and 
God, are within us, or they are nowhere. We each 
know of a certainty that life is within us ; it is just as 
true that heaven and God must occupy a place, and 
that place must be in the mind, or nowhere. Christ 
taught this and nothing but this, and this is the only 
reasonable conclusion at which we can arrive from his 
testimonv. It is an undeniable fact that an evil- 
minded, unhappy and discontented person could not 
be happy in the most beautiful paradise imaginable. 
The greatest truth ever uttered was that saying of 
Christ, "According to your faith be it unto you" : in 
other worlds, according to our own volition we shall 
receive that which we desire. The power to move the 
arm that moves the world is latent within the human 
mind : it only needs the action of our own volition to 
put it in action. Christ said his kingdom was the 



88 THE APEX 

kingdom of truth: all great minds are seeking after 
the kingdom of truth, — that kingdom of knowledge 
whereby we shall be able to solve all the problems of 
life, both domestic and national ; and they are numer- 
ous. This kingdom is being established not only in 
the individual but in society : it is like the leaven in 
the meal, and will accomplish that for which it was 
designed : namely, to spread abroad the knowledge of 
the truth and to separate the false from the true. 

But is not God in it at all ? Yes, He is in it all ; 
but He will not conform to us — we must conform to 
Him. The spiritual world is the same as the natural 
world : we do not expect that nature will furnish us 
all we desire without our volition and our labor. Re- 
ligion should teach us our duties to ourselves and to 
our neighbor. God does not need any of our service, 
— it is He that serves us, not we that serve Him. 

As an instance of one whose God is the embodiment 
of kindness (and I say this with all reverence), I 
should like to refer to a well-known minister in Bos- 
ton, whose face, life and sermons all show forth the 
beauty of the character of the God he worships. I 
have already said that we cannot all have the same 
God: those who are like this minister cannot believe 
in a vindictive God. But we must remember that all 
goodness is a savour of life unto life or of death unto 
death as we are affected by it ; for if we accept life, 
we may have life; but if we reject life, no one can 
force it upon us. Is thine eye evil because I am good ? 
is a question not easily answered without self-condem- 
nation. Because we are justified before our God it 



LIFE AND DEATH 89 

is not always safe to justify others before our God, — 
we must judge them by the God that they serve. 

If we possess the immortal ingredient of love, — that 
pure, impartial love that seeketh not to be benefitted 
by intercourse with others, but to be of benefit to them, 
— we can claim sonship with God as well as immor- 
tality. Why not? We can see no reason why we 
should not be immortal as well as our God is immortal. 
But that which has not the quality of love cannot exist 
as life ; it may exist as dead substance, as do the min- 
erals, but not as a consciousness. It is the conscious 
life of love arid activity that constitutes true existence. 
There is no reason why we, by the divine power which 
is inherent within us, should not resurrect ourselves 
into immortal existence, here and now; for Christ 
claimed that we, like Him, might by our own volition 
become the sons and daughters of God. "Be ye there- 
fore perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is perfect," 
are his words. 

Heretofore the great stumbling-block to men has 
been the idea that we cannot be holy ; but it is evident 
from all the teachings of Christ, as well as from the 
teachings of common sense and reason, that we may be 
perfect in intention, and perfect intentions lead to a 
perfect life. Then if a perfect life is God's life, by 
the same reasoning, if God is self -existent and immor- 
tal, we are also. 'No one will presume to say that the 
Infinite Soul of all things is less than immortal, for 
the very present existence of mind and matter pre- 
cludes the possibility of a beginning or an end. To 
sum up : — This is God's world — it may also be ours. 



90 THE APEX 

This eternal life is God's life — it may also be ours, 
and when we possess it we know what God is. 

Natural scientists say that man is an animal, and 
that the mind dies with the body; but they cannot 
prove this. In fact, neither the one nor the other 
dies, for the body never was anything but dead mat- 
ter, and the mind is mind and will so remain. You 
cannot change one substance into another. Water 
was always water and will so remain through all the 
ages to come; you may evaporate it and it may be 
taken up many miles into the air, but it will return 
again after many days, or be dissipated into another 
planet. Only a small part of man's capacity origi- 
nates in the brain; a very large portion is received 
from external sources, thus showing that the brain is 
not the source of the mind, or that the brain does not 
act upon the mind, but that the mind derives its infor- 
mation from external sources in most cases and com- 
municates them to the brain, the brain in turn acting 
upon the muscular system. The brain is simply an 
instrument or machine, which the mind uses for the 
accomplishment of its earthly purposes in life. 

If we should isolate a number of small children 
from society until they were grown up men and wom- 
en, they would be inferior to the lowest savage tribes ; 
because they had not had the advantages of the culti- 
vation of the externals, which children brought up in 
the society of the good may have. Our religious ideas 
have come to us through the evolution of religious 
thought that has come down to us through the ages of 
the past, and those which came to us through the me- 
diumship of Christ are perfect. He denied no one 



LIFE AND DEATH 91 

the privilege of becoming a son of God just as he was. 
He thought it not robbery to call himself the Son of 
God, neither did he deny us the privilege of becoming 
the same, — he urges us to do so. This is not religious 
cant ; this is upright manhood and womanhood, some- 
thing easy to do — something of great importance. It 
might be summed up as follows: Be yourself, just as 
you have always been when at your best ; be sincere ; 
be honest men and women. The truth which I would 
like to emphasize more strongly than any other, and 
w r hich I consider of the greatest importance, is this :— 
take care of the present and the future will take care 
of itself. 

But what is the spiritual life ? This is a question 
that may well be asked and answere ! d in this day of 
infidelity and carelessness, when people are saying, 
a We see no beauty in religion — it is a faith of sorrow 
and grief ." They say there is no light that penetrates 
into the future in our day ; all is dark ; we know noth- 
ing of the other or spiritual world that we hear so 
much about, neither can we understand anything 
about the spiritual life ; we cannot discern between 
those who profess to experience this life and those who 
say they know nothing about it. Now there is good 
reason for this way of thinking, because our teachers 
have not understood the spiritual life themselves. 
What did Christ say about it? In all His explana- 
tions of the spiritual life He illustrated it by compar- 
ing it with the natural. He taught that the spiritual 
life was the prolongation of the natural life. This is 
why he took little children to illustrate its natural- 
ness ; He said, Of such is the kingdom of heaven. 



92 THE APEX 

This was because they were purely natural, sincere 
and honest, fit to be transplanted into the spiritual 
kingdom where they might, if they should die, be 
evolved into perfection in a perfect environment in a 
place prepared for them. He looked upon the young 
man who had great possessions with love and pity, for 
He saw in him one who was not far from, but living 
on the very verge of the kingdom of heaven : one who 
was almost perfect. 

Cannot we see the spiritual life here? Christ 
opened the door and showed him the kingdom of heav- 
en, and the road to eternal life. The spiritual life is 
the continuation of the perfect natural life, — a life of 
pure intentions, of seeking to know the truth, an en- 
ergetic effort to live a perfectly natural life. To 
commit no natural sin ; to transgress no physical law ; 
to have our hearts open to the conviction of our best 
judgment as to our duties toward ourselves and oth- 
ers; to obey this conviction, even if it be to become 
poor that others may be rich ; even to follow the ex- 
ample of Him who died that others might live, — 
dying for them, if necessary, — this is to live the spir- 
itual life. But some will say that this is hard. Oh 
no, this is comparatively easy, and if your heart is 
in it, you will not be called upon to do anything that 
you will not love to do. There are many good people, 
almost perfect in heart, near to the kingdom of heav- 
en, who lack only some little act of volition to bring 
them into the kingdom. And here let me say that 
sometimes the church itself puts a stumbling-block in 
the way, by expecting people to conform to some stere- 
otyped usage, such as what is known in some religious 



LIFE AND DEATH 93 

bodies as the "anxious-seat." Perhaps in many cases 
there are other duties to be done, or things to be re- 
frained from ; perhaps there is some act of vital im- 
portance which, if it were pointed out to these good 
people, they would willingly do. Those who under- 
take to teach men the way may be held accountable 
for leading people astray. 

To make this point plainer, let us look at the other 
side and take the case of a young person who had been 
well developed physically and mentally, one who had 
been well educated, possessing in abundance the 
wealth of this world. We have seen such an one who 
was not far from the kingdom of heaven and who, 
with probably very little effort, might have entered in, 
but who, under the degenerating and poisonous action 
of some deadly sin had become imbecile or criminal ; 
had indeed become so degraded that he had no soul, 
no humanity, had sunk lower than the beast, — with- 
out hope, without love, without fear, without a God 
unless he worshipped something more like a 'demon 
than a God. I leave this point for your own follow- 
ing out. It is the difference between life and death. 

I may be criticised just here on the ground that all 
will die from the effects of disease of some kind ; both 
the good and the bad will degenerate in body and 
sometimes in mind. This is true, but if you investi- 
gate the matter you will discover a vast difference 
between those who wilfully commit sin and those 
w T hose intentions are perfect. There are those who, 
like the apostle Paul, are suffering bodily infirmities, 
but who are nevertheless living a perfectly happy life 
in an unhealthy, broken-down body. Oh, yes ! this 



94 THE APEX 

spiritual life is sometimes connected with a weak 
body, but not with a sinful mind. The disease may 
be the result of a sinful past, or it may be an inheri- 
tance; but within the old life is the spiritual one 
planted, and this is growing up and making all things 
new. But we can, at times, see an example of well- 
developed human beings who have lived their lives in 
almost perfect harmony with nature, — who have been 
quite free from the accidents common to life, and have 
lived pure-hearted lives, — we can see, I say, that their 
almost, if not quite perfect, souls have been separated 
from their bodies as perfectly and as easily as the 
ripened grain is separated by the gentle breeze from 
the sheaf. 

We have already spoken of a class of people wlio 
tell us that there is no God ; that man has no soul ; 
that the soul or mind perishes with the brain; that 
this new life about which I have said so much is sim- 
ply the development of the brain. That this is not 
true may be seen from the fact that this new life may 
come to one in a moment's time, from an external 
source, simply by the conveyance of an idea. Let 
me convey the idea to a person who disbelieves in a 
God or a soul, that Christ did not teach us that there 
is a personal God or a living soul until there was a 
new life formed within. That new life formed with- 
in is God's life, and this idea which Christ conveyed 
to man gives man the power to become a child of God, 
thus making men who are visible and tangible beings, 
p.nd whom we know as personal, conscious existences, 
children of God. Knowing this, we must accept the 
teachings of Christ which make man infinite. Men 



LIFE AND DEATH 95 

have the power of becoming the sons of God, and 
therefore visible manifestations of God. Natural 
evidence proves this, as well as the teachings of Christ, 
and if this truth will not elevate men, nothing can. 
But this true idea must and will elevate and resurrect 
those who will accept it into eternal life. This is 
what Christ meant when He said, "He that hath seen 
me, hath seen the Father." 

This idea was inherent and evolved in the person- 
ality of Christ; He has sowed it, and it will bring 
forth fruit. While it comes to us from an external 
source, it becomes an internal life and power. 



XI 

CLOSING WOEDS 

LET me say in closing that there is no necessity 
for exchanging for something different the 
particular calling in which you are engaged 
— if it is an honorable one — in or'der to live 
this life of love and service to God and your neighbor. 
You can do this best just where you are. Recreation 
is also an important part of our lives, for the person 
who takes recreation and rest can accomplish more in 
the long run than those who do not. We should sim- 
ply use the same judgment in the spiritual life that 
we do in the natural life. 

Neither are there any particular channels for God's 
money ; it is all God's money. The money that you 
pay in public taxes which is used to provide for the 
poor is as much God's money as that applied for any 
other purpose. It is also your duty to provide for 
yourself; one's first 'duty is toward himself. No 
wise father with a large family of small children to 
provide for would think of neglecting to provide for 
himself every necessity that would be conducive to his 
health or well-being. We should be careful not to get 
wrong notions of love and self-sacrifice for others, — 
we are never called upon to sacrifice anything that 
would be for our best interest. It is true that in cer- 
tain contingencies people have laid down their lives 
for others, even for their enemies, but they have loved 

9 6 



CLOSING WORDS 97 

to do so, counting not their lives dear unto them in 
their desire for others' good. 

The things of which Christ meant us to deny our- 
selves are those which are injurious to us. He did 
say, "deny thyself and take up the cross, and follow 
rue," but He meant that we should deny ourselves of 
crime, such as murder, theft, envy, unnecessary labor 
on the Sabbath, gluttony, drunkenness, or any of the 
physical or mental crimes in the whole catalogue of 
law. 

Mr. John Stuart Mill says: — "Utilitarianism re- 
quires a person to be as strictly impartial as between 
his own happiness and that of others as a disinterested 
and benevolent spectator. If the end which the utili- 
tarian doctrine proposes to itself, were not in theory 
and practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing 
could ever convince any person that it is so. No rea- 
son can be given why the general happiness is desir- 
able, except that each person, so far as he believes it 
to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, 
however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof 
which the case admits of, but all which it is possible 
to require, that happiness is a good to that person, and 
the general happiness therefore, a good to the aggre- 
gate of persons. Happiness has made out its title as 
one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of 
the criteria of morality. But it has not, by this alone, 
proved itself to be the sole criterion. To do that, it 
would seem by the same rule necessary to show, not 
only that people desire happiness, but that they never 
desire anything else. Now it is palpable that they 
do desire things which, in common language, are de- 



98 THE APEX 

cidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, 
for example, virtue, and the absence of vice, no less 
really than pleasure, and the absence of pain." 

This seems to me to be the only true idea of virtue ; 
for virtue and happiness are synonymous. To tell a 
person that he ought to be happy, would mean that he 
ought to be virtuous. It is only when we misunder- 
stand what virtue is, that we place ourselves before the 
public in a wrong light, for there is a large class of 
people who believe that virtue arid happiness are op- 
posed to each other. The true idea of virtue is a tem- 
perate, intelligent, and natural exercise or action of 
all the faculties, physical, mental and spiritual — if 
these are not all one. All the propensities may be 
cultivated within the limits of virtue ; it is the exces- 
sive or perverted use of any of them that causes un- 
happiness. The person or the machine that is minus 
a regulator will soon go to destruction. This is a law 
of the physical and spiritual as well as of the mechani- 
cal world. Alcohol, in minute quantities, exists in 
nearly all our food, but food as nature provides it 
does not have it in excess. When we extract it and 
use it as a beverage, however, it becomes a sin, — if 
there is such a thing as an external sin, for Christ 
said, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a 
man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this 
defileth a man, — meaning that sin originates in the 
heart. Alcohol — except in very small or medicinal 
quantities — is undoubtedly a poison, and no person 
can take a poison into his system when he knows that 
he is committing self-murder without committing sin. 

The following extracts from a sermon preached by 



CLOSING WORDS 99 

Kev. Charles Gordon Ames, Minister of the Church 
of the Disciples, Boston, shows which way the wind is 
blowing : — 

''Professor Ely reports that at a labor meeting the 
name of Jesus called out a burst of applause, while an 
allusion to the churches was received with hisses. . . . 
It is a sign of the times that a large part of us who 
nominally belong to the company of Jesus, have yet 
so neglected and slighted the humanities that we have 
lost the power and the right to lead a great social re- 
form ; that we cannot come near enough to our breth- 
ren to win their confidence and to exchange signals of 
good will, but must go on alone toward our own select 
and exclusive heaven. Does it mean — can it mean — 
that we have never felt the all-constraining, all-includ- 
ing love ? Or how is it that we have lost the sweet 
secret that opens the door of human hearts ? Perhaps 
we, too, are victims of the situation : we, too, are swept 
away in the confused currents, the eddies and swirls 
of social confusion. How shall ministry and church 
become mighty to serve and save the age, unless min- 
istry and church can rise above the age, and show the 
upward leading way by moving in advance ? But this 
means a profound change in our animus, attitudes and 
methods. . . . For this is our mission — to turn meai 
from darkness to light, from senseless idols to the liv- 
ing God. . . . The Eternal is ever Lord and Master 
of the temporal ; and it is the Eternal for which we 
are to stand, sure that the Eternal will stand by us, if 
we are humble, simple and true." 

What could be more true than these statements? 
This is the diagnosis of the disease of the church, and 

<LoFC. 



a sinner 

CC i 



ioo THE APEX 

its remedy ; but like most of the remedies advocated 
by the church, to be taken by some other church, pr if 
taken at all by those who advocate them, taken in neg- 
ative doses. In talking with a church deacon a few 
days ago, I made the statement that Christianity w r as 
all right, but the church was all wrong; that the 
church, ministry and people should commence and 
continue, until perfect both in heart and character, to 
pray the publican's prayer, — 'God be merciful to me, 

Oh/ he said, 'we do.' My reply was, 'If you do, 
it is only the few that know it. The great need of 
the church today is that positive assertion by the 
church that, first, we are all by nature sinners ; neith- 
er the best moral person, nor the best church member 
perfect. Second, that all people, old and young, good 
and wicked, church members and non-church mem- 
bers, need salvation from sin, and always will need to 
be saved from sin, either of omission or of commis- 
sion, as long as they live in this world. 'And this as- 
sertion must not be a negative but a positive one; it 
should, also, not be put under a bushel, but be posted 
up in public places. 

Some may ask, must we always be seeking and nev- 
er coming to a knowledge of the truth ? No ! For ev- 
ery living soul on this broad earth may come to a 
knowledge of the truth in a moment's time ; every one 
may become perfect in heart when he becomes sincere 
and honest in heart, and this is all we can become in 
this world. To surrender our hearts, and, to the best 
of our ability our lives also, for God or Good — to live 
or die (not live and die) as may be required — this is 



CLOSING WORDS 101 

all that is asked of us. Our characters will not be far 
wrong if our hearts are right. But as the world will 
expect perfection the church should not profess any 
more than it possesses ; this is why I would say that 
the church must point the world to the pattern Jesus 
Christ, not to itself. The most it can say to any one 
is, Come with us, and we will all do the best we can 
by mutual helpfulness to save each other from sin. 
Thus, they will not only be in sympathy with the labor 
party or element, but with all elements, both in this 
world and in that which is to come. In evidence of 
this assertion I would point to the apostle Paul, who 
called himself the chief of sinners ; and even Christ 
said on one occasion, "Why callest thou me good? 
None is good but one, that is God." He probably 
here had reference to quantity instead of quality. 

The question seems to be,. w T hat shall be done for 
this large class of good-hearted people who would 
like, perhaps, to go into the churches ? I think she 
should open her doors to them on condition of good 
faith, regardless of perfection of character, — gather 
them in, the good and the bad. It may be she will 
have to cast some away, and it may be that it would 
be good policy to cast out some who are already in; 
but perhaps there would be a large net increase of 
much better quality. Christ was ostracized from the 
upper class of society because he associated with what 
was called the lower class. He was called a glutton- 
ous man, a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sin- 
ners. These days are the same as those days ; we may 
indulge in the popular sins with impunity, but we 
must beware of the unpopular ones. 



102 THE APEX 

There are two sides to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It 
makes no difference what our own preference is — 
whether it be that we hope to be saved ourselves, and 
consequently hope that every one else will be saved; 
for our belief is colored by our desires. A man with 
the organs of benevolence and love well developed, 
who loves all the world and would not if he could help 
it see any one suffer, may fall into the error that all 
people, good and bad, will eventually be saved. But 
we cannot find this doctrine in the teachings of 
Christ ; He says : "And as it was in the days of Noe, 
so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They 
ate, they drank, they married wives, until the day that 
Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and de- 
stroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days 
of Lot: they did eat, they drank, they bought, they 
sold, they planted, they builded: But the same day 
that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brim- 
stone from heaven and destroyed them all ; even thus 
shall it be in that day when the Son of Man is re- 
vealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the 
house-top and his stuff in the house, let him not come 
down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let 
him likewise not turn back. Remember Lot's wife. 
Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it ; and 
whosoever shall lose his life shall find it." 

We may make what sport we please about Noah's 
Ark, and fire and brimstone : but still there is a lesson 
for me and for all others in those words. I think it 
was General Sherman who said that war is hell, and 
those who know most about war and have seen it in 
its worst phases month after month, and year after 



CLOSING WORDS 103 

year, say that they have seen hell, — and they will not 
forget it ! It will not do for ministers to continue 
preaching that everything is lovely ; 1 certainly hope 
it will be so, but I cannot think it. We must judge 
spiritual things by our knowledge of natural things. 
There is a warfare going on in nature continually ; the 
evil is ever trying to destroy the good, but in the end 
the evil will be destroyed. 

Sw T edenborg tells us that heaven and hell are in 
equilibrium, and that therefore God is obliged to pun- 
ish some classes there just as men do in this world. 
Judging by this world, it certainly looks as if this 
might be the case. We see people who are continually 
trying to make this world miserable, and we feel in- 
clined to ask the question, Why does not God destroy 
wickedness in this world and in the other one too ? It 
might as easily be done in the one world as in the 
other. 

We shall have to fight against the evil in our- 
selves, and we may be called upon to help 
fight the evils around us ; but if we overcome our- 
selves we shall have the crown of everlasting life and 
happiness : then let us be of good courage, for it will 
be well with all who strive and fight for the right. 
We are well able to go up and possess the goodly land ; 
then let us have courage and fight, and we shall surety 
conquer, for there is no such word as fail. We have 
millions more for us than all that can be against us, 
but we must work out what God has put within us, for 
it all depends upon ourselves ; He Himself is with us 
and we cannot fail. Then let us shout as we go along 
the way — the strait and narrow way, but also the easy 



104 THE APEX 

one, for it is as much better than the broad way as the 
railway is better than the broad earth road. 

"Some people," says Swedenborg, "believe that to 
live the life which leads to heaven, which is called 
spiritual life, is difficult, because they have been told 
that man must renounce the world, and deprive him- 
self of the lusts which are called lusts of the body and 
the flesh, and that he must live spiritually. And these 
things they do not understand, otherwise than that 
they must reject worldly things, which consist chiefly 
in riches and honors ; that they must walk continually 
in pious meditation about God, about salvation, and 
about eternal life; and that they must spend their 
days in prayers and in reading the word and pious 
books. This they esteem to be renouncing the world, 
and living in the spirit and not in the flesh. But that 
the case is altogether otherwise it has been given me 
to know by much experience, and from conversation 
with the angels ; and indeed those who renounce the 
world and live in the spirit in this manner, procure to 
themselves a sorrowful life, which is not receptive of 
heavenly joy ; for with every one his own life remains. 
But to the intent that he may receive the life of heaven 
into himself, it is quite necessary that he live in the 
world and engage in its business and employments, 
and that he then by moral and civil life receive spir- 
itual life ; and that spiritual life cannot otherwise be 
formed within man ; or his spirit prepared for heaven. 
For to live internal life and not external at the same 
time is like dwelling in a house which has no founda- 
tion, which gradually either sinks, or becomes full of 
chinks and breaches, or totters till it falls." 



CLOSING WORDS 105 

"That it is not so difficult as it is believed to live 
the life that leads to heaven may be seen from what 
follows : Who cannot live a civil and moral life, since 
every one from infancy is initiated into it, and from 
life in the world is acquainted with it ? Every one also 
does lead such a life, the bad and the good alike ; for 
who does not wish to be called sincere, and who does 
not wish to be called just? Almost all exercise sin- 
cerity and justice in externals, insomuch that they ap- 
pear as if they were sincere and just in heart, or as 
if they acted from real sincerity or justice." 

So much for Swedenborg. This teaching of his, 
whether he obtained his information from the spirit 
world or not, is the same as was taught by Jesus 
Christ nearly nineteen hundred years ago, namely, 
that our lives should be lives of good intentions, an'd 
that we should seek after the knowledge of the good 
and true. For it is our duty to learn our duty, as 
much as it is our duty to do it after we know it. This 
implies knowledge, and knowledge brings accounta- 
bility, and accountability may and will be a stepping 
stone to honor. This knowledge of the truth, is what 
Christ continually endeavored to instill into the 
understanding of men. He taught that men should 
in all sincerity seek to discover the truth about every 
idea in existence, whether it be in natural, political, 
theological or spiritual science. For more people 
lose their natural and spiritual lives from ignorance 
than from any other cause. When Pilate said to the 
Christ, "Art thou a King then ?" He answered, "Thou 
sayest that I am a King. To this end was I born, and 
for this cause came T into the world, that I should bear 



106 THE APEX 

witness unto the truth." In other words, bear wit- 
ness unto facts, or evidence, or reason or knowledge. 
This is the mission of the so-called Holy Ghost, — a 
subject of ridicule to the masses, and justly, too, when 
spoken of as a mysterious something that no one can 
understand ; for what cannot be explained and what 
no one can understand simply does not exist until it 
is understood. But perfect intention or loving inten- 
tion is far above knowledge alone. To illustrate this 
we will cite the case of the wealthy miser who had a 
copper and a gold coin of the same size in his purse, 
and w T hen the contribution box was passed to him in 
church he put what he supposed was the copper coin 
into it as the Lord's money ; perceiving his mistake 
and that he had really put in the gold piece, he be- 
sought the collector to allow him to take it out, which 
privilege w r as decidedly refused ; for, said the collect- 
or, "As I do not know who put it in, I have no right 
to take it out." Upon this the old miser said, "Well, 
I am sure the Lord will reward me for it." "No," 
the collector answered, "He will only give you credit 
for the copper you intended to give." 

What is common sense and reason is frequently 
God's sense and reason ; therefore we can reasonably 
believe that God will judge us in much the same way 
that reason will judge us. It is not really difficult to 
do right, for of those who have but little a very little 
will be required. 

All our power comes from God, the power to do 
good and the power to do evil ; we have nothing but 
the power of choice. If we knew the truth we would 
understand that it is really easier to do right than to 



CLOSING WORDS 



107 



do wrong, because His power which is almighty is be- 
hind us when we choose the right and refuse the evil. 
Christ taught but one method, and that was that if a 
man desires to be saved from any sin, he must first be 
willing and determined, if need be (which is not the 
rule) to sacrifice the natural life in order to obtain the 
spiritual. He must say to himself, to men and to 
God, "I will break off that sinful habit if it costs me 
my life," and then it will become easy and continue 
to grow easier for him to control that habit. This is 
the method of extracting all evil from the heart, and 
it will then be filled with all good habits and desires 
so that there will be no room for evil ones. It may, 
in some cases, be a hard and a long fight, but we can 
conquer. Many good-hearted people have apparently 
enjoyed the spending of their lives in fighting their 
besetting sins. Such men as John B. Gough, for in- 
stance, who seemed to enjoy fighting the ajDpetite for 
strong drink which was probably always seeking ad- 
mission into his heart, but which was relentlessly op- 
posed. It was to some such conflict as this that Jesus 
referred when he said, "He that loseth his life for my 
sake shall find it." In other words, he that is willing 
to lose the natural life in his effort to be saved from 
sin, shall find the better, or everlasting spiritual life. 
Every man will realize this change in himself when 
he has overcome his besetting sins. 

The question will continue to arise, "Is there a 
Hereafter ?" I say, there must be, for everything in 
existence has been shown to be immortal. But the 
vital question is, What will be the quality ? The quan- 
titv is in no sense material as compared with quality. 



108 THE APEX 

There never can be any time but present time, and this 
mysterious snare of the devil about the future we 
should ignore. We are dealing with quality. What- 
ever we are we shall be until we change; and if we 
have not the inclination to change now, there is no evi- 
dence that we shall ever change. All the evidences in 
nature tell us that the tendency of the good is toward 
improvement in circumstances, while we know the re- 
verse is true of the evil. 

I have written these things, not so much to attempt 
to prove by evidence from Christ's teachings that my 
ideas are sound, as to show that faith in Christ is 
something more than belief in his personality. For 
the devil can and does believe in that, and so can any 
one, forever, without being benefitted by it. There is 
but one way — the unconditional, comjplete surrender 
of our souls, bodies and possessions, as we may know 
them to be required ; not always as others tell us we 
ought to do, but as we ourselves believe to be our duty 
after a thorough investigation of any doubtful de- 
mand upon us. For some will try to bind heavy bur- 
dens upon us, which they themselves will not touch 
with one of their fingers. 

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." Yes, let us rest just 
here, putting the load of every day toil into the won- 
derful mechanism of perfect intentions, and it will 
carry us and our load. We shall thus find rest to our 
minds and souls, and sooner or later we shall have rest 
for our bodies, for the mind will act upon the body, 
and we shall become new creatures. As surely as God 
exists, a mind at re> G t ensures a restful body. 



CLOSING WORDS 109 

The toiling millions may know that they are per- 
forming all that is required of them while doing their 
daily work, if they have right motives ; while the well- 
to-do classes are under obligation to assist those who 
are poor, and the very rich should provide the means 
to alleviate and elevate all who are in need. The poor 
ought to have the gospel preached to them ; what is 
the gospel they need ? I say, a gospel of hope. Let 
no one bind on you any more burdens than you al- 
ready have; all you need is a heart of love for the 
GOOD, and for your neighbor, — this you may have 
without money and without price. Belong to socie- 
ties and churches or not, as you believe to be for the 
best interests of society ; but we must all belong to the 
community in which we live, and we should be willing 
to contribute all we have, if necessary, for its well- 
being and support, 

"Take that thine is and go thy way," said Christ : 
"I will give unto this last even as unto you." For he 
has served me this last hour with all the ability of his 
mind and body, and has done his best. 

The idea which I wish to convey in all I have writ- 
ten, and the one which, to my mind, Christ has the 
most difficulty in making people understand is, that 
the belief and practice of His teachings would raise 
men up to a realization of their kinship with Himself. 
They found fault with Him because, as they said, He 
being a man made himself God : this because He for- 
gave sins, and also because He said, "I and my Father 
are one." ]STow He tried to elevate man by teaching 
him that he could have the ability to control his own 
destiny and become a partner with Him — by this con- 



no THE APEX 

tract becoming from necessity a co-worker with God. 
if the privilege of being elevated until we can become 
factors in our own salvation is not all we could de- 
mand, then we ought to suffer for it. 

This places a man where he can say, I and my Fath- 
er are one ; he becomes then not a creature but a son 
of the Infinite, having life in himself. This is not 
merely belief in the Fatherhood of God and the Broth- 
erhood of man, — this elevates man to an equality with 
Christ, but only those men who accept and comply 
with the conditions. These are plain and not hard to 
comply with. 

It may be said of these statements that this is rea- 
soning in a circle. Whether it is so or not, this is just 
what Jesus taught, and places the responsibility where 
it belongs, — namely, with ourselves. We need noth- 
ing outside of ourselves for our salvation that is not 
as free as the sunshine and the rain, and the air we 
breathe. For we may appropriate Go'd just as we ap- 
propriate nature, and he is just as visible to the pure 
in heart as is the natural environment. This purity 
of heart can be developed by the law given by Christ. 

Taking it for granted, then, that these teachings are 
true, the mission of the church must hereafter be a 
mission of education, of investigation of the problem 
of physiology, or perfect character. A knowledge of 
all the questions that involve the health of the com- 
munity, and in fact knowledge in general, would be 
included in this mission of the church. Our religious 
teachers have been preaching theology until it is 
threadbare. Christ said, If I go away I will send 
the Comforter, who will fill my place in the world 



CLOSING WORDS in 

as the spirit of truth and knowledge. People know 
enough about theology. Theology is simply the Good 
or the True, and the Holy Ghost is simply the knowl- 
edge of what is good and what is true in every question 
of the day. 

Christ's mission was to teach us how to be born 
into the kingdom of heaven, and the mission of the 
Holy Ghost is the development of this new life 
through education. 



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